From Central Station

The shuttle was scheduled to pick us up at 10am, so we enjoyed a leisurely start and had time for a second coffee.

There were 6 other cyclists from Saturday's shuttle, so four had made other arrangements.  It was about a 30 minute drive to Central Station and by the time we arrived, the sky had cleared to a glorious day.

The first 20kms or so were very pleasant along a winding valley trail along the Oreti River, with a good gravel surface and we made good time to our lunch stop at Mossburn.  We pulled into Bracken Hall for their homemade pies and met up with a couple from the shuttle this morning, so we joined them for a pleasant lunch.  Lumsden is the deer capital of NZ and Simon advised that the venison pie was very tasty. The chicken one was pretty good too.   

Back on the bikes we rejoined the path which ran along the side of the highway almost the entire way to Lumsden.  For the first few kms, we played slalom with the telegraph poles strategically placed in the middle of the track at regular intervals.  Otherwise, it was a fairly dull ride and I was glad of my story as distraction.  There was a short diversion along a farm trail for about 1km, apparently built to avoid a tight corner of the highway. After crossing the Oreti River, we picked up the trail into Lumsden where it was a short ride to our airbnb stay at Purple Haze Orchard farmstay, where we had a room in a family house and the promise of a substantial breakfast

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