1993 New Zealand Cycle Tour

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Updated January 2, 2008

The diary on the pages that follow was kept from our arrival in Auckland on February 6th 1993 until our departure for Perth in Western Australia and the next leg of our World Tour on May 7th.  We covered 1,428 miles on our bikes here.  New Zealand was an outstanding destination for cycling, and the autumn weather was kind to us - I feel that some of our best memories of the year are from this period.

In terms of fitness, we'd been riding already for seven or eight weeks through from Bangkok to Singapore and around Bali, and after this and six weeks in Nepal we'd both lost several inches off our waistlines.  We were now able to pedal non-stop up most passes except the almost impassable Crown Range, but even so as the diary shows we rarely cycled more than 40 miles per day.

The bags we were carrying had lost some weight too, even though we were still prepared for the odd day of tramping in Tongariro National Park and for longer walks (the Routeburn and Milford tracks); Janet had a flower press as a luxury item, I had a small Sony Walkman with a radio picked up cheaply in Bali with half a dozen cassette tapes.  The contents of my panniers were predictably similiar to what I'd take on a trip in Europe today, albeit with a few spares that we didn't think we'd find locally.

Near Twizel, South Island

Apologies for my handwriting; I do intend to swap the diary entries for typed ones with more slides when time allows. Your feedback is always appreciated, just drop an email to jerry at blissonwheels.com if you want to goad me into action.

Here's an index of the pages, which are restricted to friends and family (authorisation required).  Those marked with a *have a photo from the day under the diary entry:-

 

Copyright ©Jerry Webb 2006

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