North Range Road

Well I've just completed my first wee bike ride of 2016 - a short little 11km route that didn't take me to far from home - so I thought I'd better do a quick write-up about a great ride Mark and I did just before Xmas.

North Range Road has always been a favourite ride of ours and while we've both motorcycle it the full length, we've never done the same on the mountain bikes as you either need to get dropped off or have a vehicle at each end - unless you're a lot fitter than us anyway...

Lucky for us, Shelley was able to drop us at the top of the hill and then pick us up again once we'd finished so finally we were able to tackle the full distance of just under 25km.

From the top of the Pahiatua track it's a steady but not too steep climb of about 3km until you get to the first downhill.  There's some great views to be had pretty much for the entire ride so a few photo stops are generally worth it - and it's nice to get a wee breather now and again eh?

Next up for us was 2 short downhills split by of course a short uphill.  These downhills are on pretty smooth dirt but the track is full of humps, hollows, dips and massive puddles that you could drown in.  They're great fun and the downhills in particular are way too short...

Start of the first downhill to the right.

After the 2nd downhill the track levels out a bit but still stays fairly uneven in places and there is still plenty of puddles to either avoid or splash through depending on your preference.  Really nice, easy and fun riding.

Once through this section you get to an area where there is a small farm dam.  It is here that we used to normally turn back (about 10-11km in) and the boggy conditions used to carry on for a few more km but with the installation of the wind farm the road is now a nice wide gravel highway from here on.  A bit further on up the road from here we stopped for elevensees and some more pics.

More good gravel followed along with a few short downhills and some uphill work which was starting to get a bit harder for me - my uphill legs need to get their act together a bit more...

Finally we got to the top of Hall Block Road and the start of a fantastic 5km descent down into Ballance.

Yep we're heading down there!

  

There's not a lot to say about the descent except that it is awesome!  We hammered it down there hitting speeds over 40km/h and hanging it out a bit on the odd corner.  There was only one small uphill to ruin the fun but the rest was truly awesome!

We ended up back at the car after just over 2 hours (a lot less than Goggle reckons) including all our stops, covered in mud, hungry but happy.  A truly awesome ride!