Paul's Touring Blog

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Update Day 31 1-3-2026 (2-28-2026 in the US)

Added post for day 19. We’re on a train from Warrnambool to Melbourne after completing The Great Ocean Road. Nice stay in Warrnambool with Maggie, our WS host, and got to see the finishes of the annual men’s and women’s Melbourne to Warrnambool race. The race is 267km (165 miles) for the men and they finished in under 6 hours. The women’s race is 156 kilometers (100 miles) for the women, and they finished in 4 hours. Quite impressive and one of those chance moments we didn’t know anything about until we got there!

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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.

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Ad’s & Anna’s breakfast spread was as delicious and filling as the lasagna. We all had our fill and lots of good-byes and well wishes. Charlie & Daisy headed out north (from whence we came) and Anna insisted we take some food with us since the route Ad had given us passed up the supermarket. Hearts full, we headed out for Waiau.

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We set an alarm to watch the sunrise. Unfortunately, we were at a spot on the beach that was facing ENE, so we got a secondary sunrise over the top of the extinct volcano crater that is Marfells Beach. It was still spectacular. We made coffee and walked on the beach a bit, then packed up the tent and gear and headed on to our WS hosts, Ad & Anna in Kaikoura.

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Our little railroad car was quite comfortable and the kitchenette made making coffee and breakfast much easier. We packed up and headed back into town as there is a hardware store that is open on Sunday and I needed a couple of metric screws to attach Dana’s third water bottle cage. Very windy today and my bike blew over while I was working on Dana’s. We’re heading into that SE wind today heading south on RT 1.