Milltown to Kumara bikeride

 Milltown To Kumara Bikeride

On Tuesday 22cnd of September, Room 8 went to Milltown to do a bike ride to Kapitea reservoir for the William Pike Challenge. The whole bike ride we were doing was on the Wilderness Trail. I went in the van with lots of other people. We had to be rightly equipped in case it rained or we got lost and, unfortunately, it did rain. 

It took about an hour to drive to MIlltown. We drove through Hokitika and past Lake Kaniere. When we arrived there it was lightly raining. We put our bikes over the gate and waited in the small shelter there until everyone was ready. It was really cool because Charlie’s dad and Hamish went on a tandem for the whole bike. 

The first part of the bike was quite hard because it involved going uphill but the hill was a big zig zag so it seemed to go on for a while. I only stopped when I failed to bike across the shortcut which was grass. The reason I failed was because my tyre got stuck in a ditch in the grass. I also stopped to wait for people. 

After a long time going uphill we finally moved into the bush and biked there. It wasn’t a huge uphill on that part and we eventually got to Cowboy’s Paradise. When I arrived there everyone who got there ahead of me was yelling, “ DON’T SKID!” I was confused but I didn’t skid. Everyone then told me that a man had come out of one of the houses and started swearing and said he would kick them. Luckily adults were with us. 

We started biking again and stopped at the swinging bridge. The girls went first and someone was shaking it but I didn’t know that so I thought I was passing out. The ground below us was so far down that I thought I was just really scared. We biked off the swinging bridge and had to go up this hill that seemed to never end. It took a huge amount of effort to bike even some of it. I had to jump off my bike because it was so hard. I felt like crying because I was so tired that even walking was hard. We finally got to the top of the hill. It felt so good to bike on flat ground. 

We had a break when we got to a clearing and then kept going again. The weather conditions were not in our favour, it was still cloudy and raining a tiny bit. The part from the clearing to the Kawhaka Intake ( the place where we had lunch ) was so fun. Billie and I were going really fast because it was downhill.  There were two fords that we had to cross. The first one had gravel in it so I was worried I was going to crash into the gravel and embarrass myself in front of everyone. I made it across and found the next one even better because I got wet.  We had to do a lot of gear changing and pedal lots because it was up and downhill. When we arrived at the Kawhaka Intake Billie, Phoebe, Summer, Wairini and I had lunch in Billie’s horse float. I felt a lot more energized then I had before. 

We started biking again although some people pulled out because they were really tired. I kept going though. The next 15 minutes were boring because we were biking on a flat road with lots of pebbles. It was bumpy and long. We eventually got to the place where we got onto an interesting track again. It was fun because there were potholes with water and I went through them. Summer and I were biking and didn’t notice that one downhill had an easy way and a hard way. We both went down the hard way which meant going over loose stones and bumps really fast. 

In the end we got to the finishing point which was Kapatia reservoir. I was disappointed that we couldn’t bike to Taramakau bridge but the rest of the day was extremely fun. I want to say a huge thank you to all the parents who came and we couldn’t have done it without them!