TA Day 7: Swing bridges, climbing and single-track

TA day 07 - Bring on the Timber Trail from Robert and Marianne on Vimeo.

I'm so proud of myself! I packed up camp and loaded my bike ready to start before 8am. Now that's early for me and did entail getting up in the dark! Shock, horror! But despite my superhuman effort I was one of the last TA riders to leave camp. One was setting off on their bike by torchlight when I got up. Who are these people?

I was eager to get going as my friend Gareth from Tauranga was coming to ride the Timber Trail with me. I had a 50km ride to get to our meeting point which included the biggest hill I'll do in the North Island. I was excited to be sharing the Timber Trail with him as it is likely to be one of the best bits of riding that I'll do.

My riding started in thick fog which was very localised, so I was soon looking at the clearest blue skies imaginable over the mirror calm Waikato River hydro lakes.

Some lovely single trail led to country roads and then the Arataki Swing bridge. All those early riders were lined up here waiting to cross over one at a time, which was quite a difficult exercise! It was not possible to walk your bike across in the normal way as the wire sides of the bridge were too narrow for the handlebars of the bikes. We had to lift the front of the bike up and walk it on its rear wheel. Both hands were holding the handlebars up high and our knees were pushing the bike forward by the seat (which was about thigh height). There were no hands left to support ourselves as the swing bridge swayed! It was dubbed the Hillary Step. 

And the climbing awaited on the other side. 600m up before meeting Gareth and another 400m after. Along the way I passed the geographic centre of the North Island, marked by a monument which was one of my photo check points. I guess it also represents the roughly half way point for my ride to Wellington. Well done me!

Much of the Timber Trail passed through beautiful mossy forest abounding with ferns. At the top of the climb we parked the bikes and set off on foot to climb Mt Pureora, a 90 minute side trip. 

From the top we could see Lake Taupo spread out below us and the mountains of Tongariro National Park. We reaped the rewards of our climbing with some fun descents to some MASSIVE swing bridges.

More descending brought us to our accom at the rustic and quirky Black Fern Lodge. We're about half way along the Timber Trail. Gareth cooked up a storm for dinner - steak, pasta and a huge plate of veggie greens; vegetables have been hard to come by since starting this journey! I'm heading to bed tired and satisfied.