REMOTE EAST CAPE
The next day I was pretty sore after the previous
day’s trials and tribulations. It was still raining but
I managed to survive another day of mud and
near death experiences. Today’s ride was around
the remote East Cape coastline – which is all very
historic in a Maori and Captain Cook kind of way.
It started with a ride over a mountainous sheep
station; imagine the Cairngorms but with grazing
stock. Then it was on to a mud bath, then death-
slide down hill tracks though ‘Jurassic Park-style’
rain-filled forests, where everyone had ‘fun’ trying
to stay upright – I came around one corner to find
four riders, and their bikes, face down in the mud!
We had to help each other back up time after time,
but this is the type of stuff great memories are
made of. Even Mike B joked it was “total carnage”.
Just getting to our lunch stop had its challenges,
having to ford a very rocky and waist deep river,
which resulted in one of the bikes being drowned.
After it was held upside down to drain the water
out of the engine, it was ready to go again.
Other mechanical fun included a sick bike that
needed towing out of the forest. Another two-
stroke with a standard tank ran out of fuel and
had to be refilled. This was done by dropping
other bikes onto their sides to drain some petrol
out of the tank into a cut down water bottle.
But it was no drama, it’s all in a day’s work for
Mike and Ange from Britton Adventures.
After the awesome fun of the mud-fest, we hit the
East Cape beaches. We had some good thrashes
along the windswept volcanic sand, keeping
the momentum up to stay on top of the sand.
Skimming the surf was a magical experience on
this wild and remote coast. I’m glad to say at this
point I was still in one piece after some challenging
riding - for my skill set anyway. Tim had an off
when his front wheel hit soft sand and sent him
over the bars – he put on a brave face but he was
pretty bruised and may have even suffered a slight
concussion. That night we stayed in a motel at Hicks
Bay whose décor and design looked like it had
changed little since being built in the late 1960s.
The next day was sunny! Tim had a bad night’s
sleep due to his brush with the beach the previous
day, and as a result he fell off three times in the
morning. There were more offs by other riders
KIWI RIDER 35