Yesterday I drove Kylie to the airport for her flight to Adelaide. She’ll be working at the Fringe festival there for a month, apparently as a ‘bovine aviation specialist’*. It’s gonna be tough continuing to travel without her.

But continue travelling I do – to Thames, on the Coromandel Peninsula. This is an odd little town which sprouted out of the gold mining times and seems to have consequently modelled itself on old Western gold-rush towns in the States. I kind of expected the Lone Ranger to come galloping down the wide empty high street at any moment.

I’d arranged to ride the Hauraki Rail Trail. The hostel hired me a very smart new mountain bike and provided a shuttle service to the far end of the route. The ride starts in Waihi where there is a colossal hole in the ground created by ongoing open-cast mining. It really is mind-bogglingly large.

From there I rode along a gravel track that followed the river for about 7 km to the first of many stops – a little railway station cafe. They still run a little steam train from here for the tourists so I was surrounded by more senior tourists as I ate my date and walnut cake with coffee.

I hopped on the bike again and continued, stopping to check out the old ‘battery’ works used for extracting gold and silver and a short walk to a nearby waterfall. The trail itself is very flat (as ‘rail trails’ always are) and you pass lots of other cyclists and the occasional walker as you pedal.

At one point the trail passes through a dead-straight 1km tunnel. I’d been told about this and just advised to watch out for walkers in the tunnel. But as I rode into the tunnel I soon discovered I had no idea if there was anyone walking in there – it was pitch blank. And I mean absolutely pitch blank! ‘Who makes a tunnel with no lights in it!’ I kept asking myself. I couldn’t see the walls or even the ground on which I assumed I was cycling. It was incredibly surreal – all I could see was the pin-prick of light from the far end of the tunnel. After a while I was getting too disoriented – not to mention fearful of bumping into someone or a wall – so I got off and walked my bike the rest of the way. I later discovered there’d been a power cut in the area and the tunnel was normally well lit!

That’s when the next problem occurred… I’d taken a detour down another path that was marked ‘Windows Walk’. This takes you up a side gorge to the spot where there once was a gold mine serviced by a (now abandoned) old railway line that mostly went through the mountain rock, with periodic ‘windows’ to the outside world. The track was narrow with lots of hikers so after a while I locked my bike to the railings and proceeded on foot for the last stretch. On returning to my bike I discovered the lock was jammed. No matter which way I pulled or prodded the key, it wouldn’t budge. I was stuck in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest road, with an expensive hired bike (my only means of getting home) locked to the railings! After 10 minutes of struggling and my hands getting tired from the effort, a group of hikers, all in their 50s and 60s, stopped to see what the problem was and a couple of the guys gave the lock a go themselves (lets face it – who can resist the challenge of ‘the key just won’t work’!). After they’d been wrestling with it for about 5 minutes (with constant suggestions from the other 10-20 in their group who’d stopped to watch), I phoned Craig back at the hostel. His suggestion was to use water to flush out any dirt/dust that had accumulated in the lock and, much to my relief, it worked!

I cycled back to the main path and headed straight to a cafe for an ice-cream. While I was there I ended up helping fix a lady’s bike chain that had got stuck fast. I set off again, feeling like I’d completed some sort of bike-fixing loop.

The mid-point was Paeroa, home of L&P, or Lemon and Paeroa, New Zealands ‘National Soft Drink’ (does England have a National Soft Drink?!). I stopped briefly to purchase the requisite bottle – not bad at all – and set off again.

The second half of the ride was much less exciting so I boshed it out in one sitting, so to speak. I had a reasonable head-wind all the way and the route just stretched on for miles through flat open farmland. Not too exciting but at least it was all traffic-free.

Perhaps the highlight though was discovering this little gem on the street next to my hostel…

* burger flipper