Distance: 17 km
Start: McLeans Forest car park
Finish: Same place (it is loopy)
Date: Friday 19th April 2024
I find it quite astounding that, after 132 blog posts, we are still discovering new places to visit in the Christchurch/Canterbury region. And today we were checking out McLeans Forest (in the 15,000 hectare Waimakariri River Regional Park) for the first time. The plan: to combine three cycling trails (Tresillian Loop, River Loop and Coringa Loop) into one large 17 km loop. This is relatively easily done because all the loops are inter-connected in a larger one-way system. A warning though, there are no signs with acual track names (apart from an arrow at the car park pointing in the general direction of the Tresillian Loop). The idea is to follow the bike icon signage. There are confusing information boards dotted about the place. You can mostly follow your nose but we sometimes had to pause at track junctions and have a think. And once we got out my printed map, in the nick of time, thereby narrowly avoiding a recircumnavigation of the entire Tresillian Loop.
With spurwing plovers squawking overhead, we extracted the bikes from the wiggly bike rack and set off on the Tresillian Loop - a gravelly trail that soon turned left (at the easy-to-miss bike icon signage) into the forest. Crossing fingers that we were still on the correct path (we were), we picked up speed and were soon whizzing along the track through the pine trees with the fresh wind whistling through the earholes. The paths are nicely curved, with the corners slightly sloped for optimal banking. Biking is fun! But alas, I still ride like such a klutz. Carolien has been on a bike since she was a whippersnapper and she steamed ahead, leaving me in the distance - squawking as I negotiated corners and hillocks.
We crossed a stopbank (a groyne perhaps) and then cycled through a deforested area, before reentering the forest and eventually coming to an unmarked turn off and a confusing information board. We paused to discuss the inaccuracies of the "You are here" placement on the map. In hindsight we were indeed at the River Loop turn-off but at the time it was a bit of a leap of faith. The loop bumped over the river stones without exactly reaching the riverbed, we possibly should have taken the walking path that branched off, but we ended up at a quarry of sorts, looking out to the water in the distance.
Back on the Tresillian Loop, the poplars were a beautiful yellow and when the sun came out from behind the clouds briefly, they shone like gold. The smell of composting leaves reminded Carolien of when she was a whippersnapper living in the Netherlands. The track undulated and sometimes the (tiny) hillocks flumoxed me somewhat. Apparently the idea is to change down gears as the gradient increases. But it wasn't happening for me and a couple of times I ran out of schwung and had to get off the bike with a squawk and walk to the "top". I must admit that the fault lay entirely with the operator and not the bike. The trails are all graded "easy".
