Paul's Touring Blog

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Update Day 36 1-5-2026 (3-4-2026 in the US)

Added posts for days 20 and 21. Currently in Yackandandah after three days of riding and two more great Warm Showers hosts in Seymour and Wangaratta. Actually, 3. Tonight we’re staying in a house of a women who lived in State College for 4 years in the late 80s/early 90s while her then husband worked on his PhD. Just a random request, but Kirsten saw our profile and sent a message that she wasn’t at home, but her neighbors would let us in. We talked to her on the phone about her time in SC and getting to the house, etc. So, here we are and heading to bed for a good rest.

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We had a pretty good night, that is until the video family decided that a common sleeping area, surrounded by dozens of snoring and dozing passengers, was a good place to have a 6 AM video call. Rude, to say the least. We weren’t that close to them, and none of the closer passengers called them out (they were obviously from more polite societies). We did catch a few more Zzzzzs and the ferry was about an hour and a half late getting into Devonport, so we had the extra time.

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Our restful night wasn’t to be. About 2 AM, I was woken by a group of drunk German teens in the kitchen area having a party. I got up and reminded them that it was quiet hours — they settled down for a bit, but by 2:30 were still laughing and I went out again (and sent a note to the host). By 3, they finally settled down, and I was able to get back to sleep. The only thing that got Dana up was my going out — she can normally sleep through a lot of commotion.

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Tuesday morning, 3 AM, Christchurch airport. Everything went smoothly tho I had to pull a ½ kg from both of the bikes boxes to meet the weight requirement. No one pulled out a tape measure, and we got the bikes and our 2nd bags checked, got our boarding passes, finished off all the food we weren’t allowed to bring on the plane.

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It was a dark and stormy night… (Credit: Snoopy!). Windy for sure. We got a bit of water on the floor of the tent, but we stayed dry on our pads. The rain had diminished somewhat. enough to make a break for the kitchen and bathrooms. We fired up the stove and made coffee and oatmeal mixed with granola. If the weather had been nicer, we would have taken the long route around back to Christchurch, but in the end we decided to get back on the ferry, have a stop at Lyttelton, and reassess our options from there. We said good-bye’s to Derrick, Jared, Michelle, Boh & Moss and different points of the morning, and headed out.

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After our good rest, we broke camp and headed to the picnic tables for coffee. Then followed a big debate about what to do next. I wanted to stay closer to Christchurch and Dana wanted more challenging hikes. That was fine, but our first challenge was to get out of Taylor’s Mistake and back into Sumner where it was flat. There were restaurants, and my compromise request for all the upcoming climbing was getting breakfast and charging our phones.

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It was nice to start the day off with hot coffee that wasn’t heated on our little stove. The campground kitchen had a number of water boiler kettles and we used that for our press. Breakfast was granola & yogurt, one of our staples. It was a nice day so we packed up camp and headed for Godley Head.

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We had a great rest and Sheralee and Jean welcomed us for breakfast of granola and yogurt and more touring advice. We headed out about 10 and headed into Christchurch downtown to try to rent the elusive vehicle. No luck. So we headed to a North Brighton park that supposedly allowed tent camping.

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The Amberley Hotel was a shared bath experience, but there weren’t any other patrons on our side of the hotel, so it wasn’t an issue. There was a fully stocked kitchenette with cereals, bread, milk, hot water kettle, coffee and tea and we made ourselves a nice breakfast while chatting with a British couple who were touring the island by car while visiting their son.

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We got up in the morning, used the facilities and got a tour of Lindsay’s Man Cave. Somewhere in that time, Dana got coffee at the shop down the street. On the way out, I stopped at that same shop, got a breakfast pie, and met two nice women cyclists and started chatting with them. Dana soon joined and we learned Gwen was a semi-retired travelling nurse. She would go back for a number of weeks, just to earn enough to finance here next bike trip. Can’t remember exactly but I think Donna was also a nurse, but fully retired.