Bends, bends and more
bends. Short sweepers, long
sweepers, uphill, downhill
and around the side of hills.
Just magnificent and so easy
to find a good rhythm on
they’re probably a good compromise for a rental
that will likely spend most of its time in town rather
than out corner carving. My Speedy carries the
not altogether flattering nickname of ‘The Tractor’
and my time on the Street Triple in New Cal was
a firm reminder that the smaller bike, whilst a
little cramped for my 6’ 3”, is a much more agile
package than its big bruising brother. I liked. A lot.
New Caledonia, and more specifically the main
island, Grande Terre, lies just three hours flight from
Auckland via Air Calin and sits at a balmy latitude
of 22 degrees South or thereabouts. The capital
city, Nouméa is on the west coast towards the
southern end of the island and is a well developed
provincial town of some 200,000 people. Out
of Nouméa, the island is largely populated by
the Kanak locals of Melanesian lineage. They’re
a wonderfully friendly bunch of people and
between our crap French and their variable
English, we always figured things out eventually.
GREAT ROAD TRIP DESTINATION
Grand Terre isn’t your average small Pacific
Island, it’s around 400km long and 50-70km wide
along most of its length. And what makes New
Cal such a good retreat for a short road trip is the
roads themselves. The road surface for the most
part was absolutely top quality, although we did
56KIWI RIDER
encounter a few short sections that the heat and
traffic had turned into washboards and were well
overdue a decent resurfacing job. These were very
much the exception and not the rule though.
Speed limits are sensible, in general 50km/h in
town, 110 out of town and the occasional 90, 70 or
30 zones depending on local conditions. Traffic,
especially up north, was very light and the majority
of drivers were sensible and courteous. We’d
been warned that driving at night could be a little
hazardous but we never tested that out and kept
our driving to daylight/twilight hours. Availability
of petrol was pretty good, but it pays to top up in
major towns rather than risk getting caught short
in the middle of nowhere, although I suspect that
the locals would probably go out of their way
to help out in the event of getting stranded.
Over a stretch of five days, we put about 900km
on the bike. We also hired a car and swapped riding/
driving duties whenever we felt like it. That meant
that we didn’t have to try and limit our luggage to
just bike-carriage and the road trip was only part of
the fortnight we had planned out for the holiday.
Sarah and I had both brought armoured summer
jackets, summer gloves and shorty boots with us and
borrowed helmets from Bernard at Nouméa Rider.
In retrospect, we wish we’d bought our own helmets
as Bernard had a very limited selection of full face