Reflections on the 2025 Tour Aotearoa Brevet

TA Brevet Ride Numbers:

Total Days: 30

Rest Days: 1 (needed bottom bracket repair)

Miles Traveled: 1823.7

Total Elevation Gain: 99140

Average Miles: 62.9 

Longest Ride: 91.3 miles

Shortest Ride:  23.3 miles (excluding zero day)

Total Climbing: 99140’

Most Climbing in a Day: 6755’ 

Least Climbing in a Day: 577’

Days with Rain: 11 out of 30 days

Number of Ferry Rides: 5

Number of chains that needed to be replaced: 2 (one each, shortly after the beach)

Number of days where goats jumped onto the trail in front of us, scaring the bejeezus out of us: 2

Number of fellow brevet riders who finished the same day we did: ~12

Trip Totals including days before and after the brevet:

Miles: 1898.95

Climbing: 105437’

Overnights (Including night before and after): We ended up preferring to stay dry indoors.  The holiday parks and hostels were great places to stay.

• Hotel: 18
• Cabins / tiny homes: 6
• Backpackers / Hostels: 3
• Tent Camping: 4 — amazing views of the night sky when it wasn’t cloudy

Highlights:

• Heading down to Ninety Mile Beach with the riders at the start of the brevet, seeing the giant sand dune, riding through the creek bed, and arriving at the beach with the surf pounding in.
• Riding singletrack through forests filled with trees, moss, ferns that could be as large as palm trees, calling birds (some that sound like R2D2 from the original star wars), and rail tunnels.  The Timber Trail, the Kaiwhakauka Track which ended in a jetboat ride to Pipiriki, the Remutaka Cycle Trail, and the West Coast Wilderness Trail were all favorites.
• Seeing the birds of New Zealand which evolved with no predators and thus aren’t too intimidated by mammals like us.  
• Riding the jet boat from the landing near the Bridge to Nowhere to Pipiriki.  The jet boat driver was very careful when near any canoes, but we did have some speedy turns near cliffs, a real blast.
• Seeking out the 30 photos we needed to take at photo checkpoints to make the Tour Aotearoa Hall of Fame.  The quest for these sights took us places we might have otherwise missed, the descriptions were entertaining, and we had fun debating where to snap some of the pictures such as which cows were most photogenic.
• We were very taken with the eels at the Kiwi Centre in Hokitika on our one zero day!
• The swing bridges were cool every time although the very narrow ones by the Bridge to Nowhere, where signs direct you to tip your bike up onto the back wheel were challenging. This was especially true when there were a couple steps leading up to the narrow bridge.  After a while we realized we could wriggle the handlebars through and wheel across while squeezed next to our bikes.
• Hokitika Cycles in Hokitika and Velo Ronny’s Bicycle Store in Whanganui were the kind of bike shops you love stopping into, staffed with super friendly people who enjoyed helping TA riders.
• After the brevet, we toured Stewart Island where we saw some amazing bird life, did some hiking, and enjoyed a few days off the bike.  We also took a tour to Milford Sound and did a short bike tour that included  visiting a winery.  There’s so much to see in New Zealand both on and off the TA.  While it’s challenging to lug bikes around when you’re not riding, these post-ride adventures were also trip highlights.

The only downside to the Tour Aotearoa:

• Sharing some roads with big lumber trucks, busses, and impatient tourists when there’s no shoulder. Drivers are at least as considerate as drivers in the US, but there’s so little space on some roads that you could reach out and touch some passing vehicles.
• After being passed at speed by a large truck or bus, you might get blown around for as long as 15-20 seconds.
• Many New Zealand cyclists wear neon green or yellow for increased visibility, though we didn’t feel unseen with our blinking lights and reflectors. There just wasn’t much room.

TA compared to riding the Divide:

• Brevet vs Touring:
• The choice of doing the brevet vs touring is similar to the trade offs to racing the Tour Divide vs touring it.  When you join the event, there’s a lot of cameraderie among the participants, especially those on your same pace who you see repeatedly during the ride.  Outside of the events, you will still meet a lot of riders on the route.
• For the TA brevet, participants must offset their carbon emissions from travelling to the start and end of the brevet.  This was over US$400 for us travelling from the western US, so kinda pricey. There’s no entry fee for the Tour Divide
• For the TA brevet, participants must donate NZ$100 to a charity of their choice.  We proudly donated to Alzheimers New Zealand and the Neurological Foundation of New Zealand.
• If you tour outside of the TA brevet, chances are very good that you’ll meet others en route as you will on the Divide.
• Cell phone coverage: Outside of towns, there isn’t much phone coverage on either route except, unexpectedly, we had coverage in the great basin along the divide.
• Resupply & Food:
• Towns are closer together on the TA, and other than the first day, we never carried more than 2 liters of water which saves weight on the bike. 
• A lot of small grocery stores carried freeze dried dinners in New Zealand.  We’ve never seen them for sale outside of outdoor sport stores along the Divide.
• There are way more pies and fish and chips on the TA than on the Divide!
• Camping vs Hotels: With careful planning and flexibility, you could ride the TA without a sleep system. Your bike would be a lot lighter, and it’s nice to not pack up wet gear in the morning. It’s too far between hotels to do that unsupported on the divide if you sleep every night.  You pretty much need a sleep system on the Divide.
• Clothes and Gear: 
• We didn’t have any really cold nights in New Zealand, and I didn’t wear my non-biking gloves.  I only wore my warm shirt once, and it was more about laundry than about warmth. I never used my overmitts though there were a couple of mornings where my hands were cold.  I used all my warm gear on the Divide.
• On day 1 on the beach at the TA, we each started with 4 liters of water.  After that, we never carried more than 2 liters.  That’s a lot of weight you don’t have to carry!  
• In New Zealand, we only used our water filter a couple of times at camp sites where the water is collected from rain, and signs explicitly tell you to purify the water.  In contrast, we had 8-10 liters of capacity on the divide, started most days with at least 4 liters, and filtered from cow ponds and creeks.
• E-bikes: they are really popular in the states, but we don’t recall seeing any on the Divide, perhaps due to the distance between charging opportunities. They are popular in NZ, and we saw a number of people riding the TA route on them.

Queenstown and Arrowtown

Queenstown to Arrowtown via Coronet Race: 31.1 miles, 3465’ climbing, in the clouds
Gibbston Valley: 23 miles, 1713’ climbing
Arrowtown to Queenstown, soggy version: 17.5 miles, 1070’ climbing

Lodging: 

    Blue Peaks Motels, Queenstown 

    Tiny home in the Hampshire Holiday Park, Arrowtown

Having finished the TA brevet, we decided to do some shorter rides around Queenstown for a more relaxing experience on the local cycling trails which are largely separate from traffic. 

First we rode to Arrowtown via Arthur’s Point. Once we got out of town we were on a separated bike path. We detoured up towards the Coronet Loop with rain threatening. Our gpx route wasn’t accurate, and we chatted with a visiting Aussie about the local paths. We climbed up steep switchbacks to the Coronet Race, an old flume trail where water was carried to mines back in the day. We were up in the clouds with some drop offs, very glad it wasn’t actually raining since the narrow trails looked like they could be slippery. After a long traverse, we descended through a creekside canyon to the Arrowtown trails. Our tiny house in the holiday park was cute and comfortable, and we made it without getting rained on.

The next day, under threatening clouds, we rode up the Gibbston Valley, a popular route for wine tasting tours via e-bike. Several miles up the trails, we crossed a long swing bridge. A few miles later was a large bridge with a bungy jumping setup in the middle. We watched a couple of people jump towards the beautiful blue-green river below: one who screamed and one who was calm. Continuing up the valley, we saw rafters below on the river which had beautiful pools and cliffs, very inviting on a warm day. Finally we stopped for lunch and went for a wine tasting at Peregrine winery, known for their Pinot noirs, and we chose a bottle to take back to our holiday park. Apparently the Otago region has more Pinot noirs compared to the more productive Marlborough region which produces a lot of Sauvignon blanc. Trivia: all wine bottles in New Zealand have twist off caps. 

On day 3 we packed up early in the rain to head back to Queenstown. Every hotel in NZ seems to have an electric kettle and tea and coffee fixings, including fresh milk if you like, but we got good coffees at a kiosk by the holiday park entrance. It rained all day. We attempted to return to Queenstownnvia a route we hadn’t fully followed already, but closures forced us back onto the TA route. It was a short but damp ride, the last of our explorations around Queenstown on this trip.

We located a couple bike boxes at a bike shop, not plentiful at the end of the season, and carried them back to our hotel where we washed off our bikes. This is the end of our trip. We packed up bikes and are headed for home. We will post some reflections next week about reflections on the TA and our time here.

Three days on Stewart Island (Rakiura)

 Lodging: Kowhai Guest Lodge

After completing the TA we decided to take a few days off of our bikes to visit Stewart Island, just south off the coast of South Island. Lodging there books up in advance, and we couldn’t plan dates far ahead due to the uncertain nature of bike travel, so we were excited to find a room in a guest house where you book a bedroom and share the kitchen and living areas with other guests. In the end we were the only ones staying, so we had the place to ourselves including a deck with views of the town harbor. Only a few hundred people live here, so it’s small and peaceful. We could have brought our bikes and used them to explore, but we wanted time off and left them at our hotel in Bluff.

Just after our ferry docked, there was an 7.4 richter earthquake ~100km away, and we all got tsunami warnings on our cell phones. No tsunami materialized. Our hosts, Peter and Iris, showed us around our guest house which was only ~0.3 miles from the ferry dock, shops, and restaurants and had a beautiful garden. Peter and Iris pretty much treated us like family friends rather than lodgers during our stay — very generous with their knowledge of plants, birds, wildlife, and local history.

The next day after arrival Peter took us on a private tour of nearby Ulva island, an island unique in that it has no predators. As a ranger in the late sixties, Peter was part of removing predators and restoring natural habitat on the island. New Zealand had no mammals except a couple bats. All mammals were introduced, and many wreaked havoc with bird populations. Native birds aren’t fearful of people since they evolved with no predators which makes them extra vulnerable to predation, but it’s great for bird watching.

Peter is a colorful character with an interesting background as sailor and also served as a Ranger of Ulva island for a year when he was younger.  He was super knowledgeable about all of Stewart Island and its surrounding islands.  We saw a sea lion resting on the beach meters away as well as a number of local birds including the saddleback, tui (which make strange sounds — whirring, clicking, and R2D2 sounds), kaka, parakeets, yellow heads, fantails, Stewart island pigeons, and others…  The robin is particularly curious and approaches you to dine on the insects you stir up. We learned about the many ways that the population of invasive pests such as rats and possums are controlled and about many of the plants, native and otherwise.  It was a great tour.

At our guest house, every evening a kaka flew in for apple slices. The kakas large parrots are similar in size to the keas we saw in Fox Glacier. Iris and Peter left apples to feed them (no cores or seeds). The bird would eat the fruit except the peel. It felt strange to feed the wild parrots here when there were explicit signs not to feed the others in Fox Glacier, but Peter and Iris assured us it was fine to do. The kaka visited us multiple times in our evenings there.

The next day Peter came by and invited us to their home for coffee and a visit.  They were both so nice and welcoming, and their house was lovely with views of both the town harbor and their expansive garden.  After our coffee we went on a hike up Fern Gully and around Ryan’s Track.  It rained for a bit of the walk but later cleared.

In the evening we headed out for a kiwi sighting on a tour we had booked before heading to Stewart island.  Kiwi are usually only active at night, so we headed out at dusk.  We took a boat to surrounding islands seeing several albatrosses, fauveau shags, fur seals, sea lions. We spotted a rare yellow eyed penguin on Bench Island, then we split into two groups to silently creep through the rain forest in search of kiwis. The stars and Milky Way were bright above us with distant sounds of crashing waves.  We spotted one kiwi in the forest, apparently dining on worms, pecking its long beak into the forest floor. Later we also saw a juvenile on the beach, easier to see its large oval body and dinosaur-ish feet.

After coffee on our last morning, we took the hour long, bumpy ferry ride across the swells back to Bluff. We walked to our last hotel where we had stashed our bikes, packed up, and rode the ~22 miles back to the town of Invercargill. It was a bit windy and open, all on cycle trails but partly near the noisy road. It felt good to be back on the bikes but at an easy pace. Tomorrow we will transfer to Queenstown with Catch-a-Bus-South for a little more exploration. 

TA Day 30 - Mossburn to Bluff

 84.5 miles, 577’ climbing — easiest riding day?

Lodging: Lands End Boutique Hotel

The Mossburn Railway Hotel was fabulous — full of character and excellent food. It was also full of TA cyclists. Today was the last day to finish (30 days from starting) and make the “Tour Aotearoa Hall of Fame” for the brevet. All the cyclists on a similar pace, many of whom we have have barely seen for a couple of weeks, were congregated at this hotel since lodging is scarce and this was the best place to stage for the finish.

By 5am, we could hear people rising, packing their bikes outside by headlamp. We held on until after 6am, then had coffee and toast and packed our bikes. We headed out at 7:15 with predawn light and headlights. We were on a roadside gravel trail for several miles, then fast, quiet paved roads with barely any climbing and no headwind. We made it to Winton, our half way mark, in good time, navigating a detour and stopping at a cafe for coffee and full breakfast. For some reason our service was very slow (25 minutes for coffee, longer for our meals) , but it was tasty and worth the wait. We saw a lot of fellow brevet riders there and sat with Mark “hyphenator” from Wellington.

Our ride continued on pavement and gravel, all good with low traffic. We snapped pictures of a southland character for our checkpoints and turned onto a long gravel cycle path, a little more exposed to the wind. 

The last several miles were into a headwind with a few climbs, but we felt a drive to the finish. This part of the route was shared with Te Aroha hikers, the equivalent route for those on foot, some of whom have taken months to walk the length of New Zealand. 

We rounded the corner to Stirling Point, the waypost for the southern end of New Zealand. Fellow brevet riders who had recently arrived cheered us in, and we congratulated each other. We took pictures of each other, for hikers at the end of their journey, and even for some tourists. Our lovely hotel was just meters away with a sea view room. After cleaning up, we greeted a few more brevet riders as they completed their journeys, then had dinner and picked up finisher medals at the restaurant overlooking the tip of the bluff. Views of the cliffs and the sea are amazing.

It felt odd to have finished with the easiest riding day at the end and the hardest probably being the first day on the beach. We will add reflections on our journey soon. First we are rearranging our gear to do some non-bike travel, starting with a few days on Stewart Island.

TA Day 29 - Queenstown to Mossburn

 72.9 miles, 8 of that on a boat, 2657’ climbing

Lodging: Mossburn Railway Lodge

Rain

It was raining as we readied ourselves in the morning. After a croissant and instant coffee in our room, we rode down to the O’Regan’s wharf in full rain gear to meet our boat with skipper Neville from Queenstown boat charters. Tony, Andy, Graham, and Peter, fellow TA riders we’ve been seeing most days, met us there to share the cost of the boat which could ferry 6 bikes. We loaded our bikes for our 30 minute cruise across the lake to Walter Peak. Neville said that the lake is natural and is 1500m deep. We were dropped at a dock in front of what appeared to be an upscale lodge. Another boat unloaded some cyclists at the same time. There are a bunch of us with a 30 day finish goal on about the same pace.

For a couple of hours the rain would lift and come down harder as we contoured around low, grassy and scrubby hills. There was one longer climb, but mostly it was easy riding until we reached a grassy plateau. There the wind was in our faces with some rain mixed in, requiring effort although the road was flat. We passed a lot of cows and sheep, some beautiful large trees, and we braved a couple of creek crossings. The rain finally relented, but it was a bit of a grind across a road with a lot of loose gravel and some washboard. We had hoped to take it easier today, but it wasn’t working out that way.

Finally we turned off onto a cycle track that was mostly a slight downhill. It followed a river somewhat, traversing around the boundaries of a number of farms. After 25km, we arrived to more rain and a double rainbow in Mossburn. The old railway hotel is a charming old brick hotel, and all our fellow cyclists on our pace are here. It has a bar and a good restaurant and a host with a lot of character.

Tomorrow will be our big day to the end of the TA though there are options if we are tired to stop early. It feels strange to be coming to the end, but we look forward to some days off the bikes.