This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
Mid April '07 by Bronwyn Bell
This was a non-club trip, but with a couple of clubbies and a non-clubbie in attendance. It served as an experiment in - if I actually did lead an EM trip along the Hutt River trail, what sort of times etc am I looking at. The experiment was a success, if I ever lead an EM trip on this route, I'll know what to expect. Two of us townie clubbies set off in the not too horribly early morning, I think it was a Saturday... round 10.30ish, if I recall correctly, one of us was late due to the other not texting at the right time, but the weather was fine and there was no rush, so no worries. We were however going to be considerably late for meeting up with the other person who lives in Naenae so was going to meet us en route. Again, due to nice weather and the general 'no worries’ attitudes, they were happy sitting and waiting in the sun for us. So, it took Michael and I about 1/2hr from leaving town to get where the trail starts in Petone, crossing the bridge to Seaview, on the right hand side of the river - we were going fairly quickly along the highway, just to get off of it! Michael had his panniers on filled with books because he was practising for a long trip but that didn't slow him down. Then it took about 15 mins from the start of the trail in Petone, to the spot where we met up with Sigi at an overpass that I can't recall the name of, it was not far from where we rode past the bustling Saturday morning market in the parking lot area behind the main shops in Hutt City. As mentioned before, the weather was perfect, we decided to aim for Totara Park/Harcourt Park as a good destination for lunch, and turn around spot. We trundled along at a decent pace, the trail has lots of forced stops for cyclists in the form of gate things that you have to get off in order to manouver your bike through. And we stopped at some of the route map signs at the different intersections along the way, just to see where we were and how far we had to go... and check if any of us were hungry enough to have lunch now instead of at the destination. We were all happy enough to keep going, but by the time we got to our destination at Harcourt park, I for one was hungry as it was around 2pm by then and my tummy's weekday schedule of lunch at noon was definitely ringing it's late bell. After we'd lunched and lounged a bit. We hopped back on our bikes and headed back from where we'd came. There was a slight head breeze at this point, but not enough to make it tougher peddling at all. In fact, coming back is on a slight angle down, as it's following the river down towards the ocean. So the trip back is about 15 minutes shorter. There were a fair few walkers, joggers, and other cyclists on the track, but not enough to make it crowded by any means, it was just pleasantly populated. And the dog walkers were all very good with either popping their dogs on the lead as we approached, or stopping and making their dogs sit and wait while we courteously slowed down and gave them space as we rode by. We said goodbye to Sigi at her turn off, sometime after 3pm-ish, then cruised back to town, getting back to Wellington city 4.30-ish. All in all a very lovely ride, and a great way to spend an early autumn day.