Just because we’re no longer ‘on the road’ doesn’t mean that the two wheeled adventuring comes to an end. Quite the opposite in fact, by being in one place we now have the opportunity to explore an area in more depth, find out it’s secrets and extend our knowledge of an area beyond just a minutely thin line on the map.

While Alice’s back is not yet up to riding a bike, Pete takes up the reigns of continuing our two wheeled exploration of the world, starting with the world that’s closest to home. What lies just beyond our front doors is so often overlooked, taken for granted or underestimated by those in the grips of routine but for us the very novelty of having a door accentuates the wonders we find beyond it.

Fortunately in this place we don’t have too look to hard to see that wonder. Just around the corner from our sleepy suburb of Island Bay can be found a stunning array of raw nature, trails, wildlife and Kiwi heritage that it’s hard to believe lies just within a stones throw from the city centre; and despite being normality to our 200,000 neighbours they more than hold their own when compared to even the most exotic sections of our journey around the world.

So here’s some shots from a few rides within minutes of our newly acquired front door. What lies beyond yours?

The Bay

It’s all about balance

Around the corner

After the road ends

Crystal clear

Anchored

In a rut?

Traditional ‘Batch’

Another Batch

Fuel

Let sleeping seals lie!

Trail

Ridge

Wellington’s extensive MTB Trail Network

Early morning cityscape

The road back home

Living in Wellington

September 5, 2014

New Zealand

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It was bound to happen at some point… We were going to stop still. But where?

Back in North India we’d bumped into Kiwi Pete riding his bike towards Leh. On hearing that we were heading to New Zealand he convinced us that Wellington was the place to be. Craft beer & Mountain Biking were his key arguments and we were sold…

The plan from the very beginning had been to try living in a city for a while and being winter in New Zealand it seemed like the best option if we were to find work (& we really needed to find work…). Wellington seems to get underrated as a capitol city but we’ve been more than pleasantly surprised by this ‘Cool Little Capitol’ nestled into the hills on the southern tip of North Island where it seems that you’re never more than about ten minutes from being out in the countryside.

Re-united with Kiwi Pete we were taken firmly under his wing, being warmly welcomed into his family home and enthusiastically shown all that Wellington has to offer. Pete & his mates are crazy about mountain biking and more than a little fond of sampling the products of New Zealand’s thriving craft beer scene. As such they’ve formed ‘Team RTD’ (or ‘Ride-to-Drink’… recently changed to ‘Ride-the-Dirt’ for diplomatic and marketing reasons…) complete with tour bus, a whole host of top end mountain bikes and a knowledge of Wellington’s extensive trail network that stretches back further back than any of them would care to remember. Our Pete, having had fat tyre withdrawals for long periods of the trip, found himself in Mountain Bike heaven.

Alice, however had more important matters to address. Her back problems, having never truly healed since the mountains in Tajikistan, had ultimately forced her to stop riding bikes. So, taking advantage of being in a city, she’s thrown herself into finding treatment and rehabilitation in a number of areas with Physiotherapists, Osteopaths and Pediatrists all scratching their heads to find the source of her problems. It turns out that there’s a lot of work to do but having also found a thriving yoga community in Wellington she’s well on her way and is taking her own geeky pleasure from thoroughly learning about every aspect and phase of the process.

We quickly found jobs, Alice picking up temping work in the city and Pete working a few days a week in the bike shop that is the heart of Team RTD, but we’ve have had other work on our minds too. With the experiences from the trip still fresh we’re keen to start using them as an inspiration to others. The first phase of this has been in creating a multi-media presentation that has already had a successful debut in the heart of the city. Although we’ve come to the end of one journey we’re now excited by the prospect of embarking on a new one with this project and we’re bursting with more ideas on this front.

So now we’ve found our own little place to live on the south coast of the city in the village-like suburb of Island Bay and are relishing the unfamiliar comforts of having a fixed home for a while. We’ve loved the adventure and challenges of settling down for a while and as usual it’s all the amazing people that we’ve met that have made the experience possible and worth while.

We’ve learned that life is in fact a continued adventure with no real beginnings or endings but rather a series of progressions that develop into and inform one another. We’re extraordinarily happy with all that we’ve achieved together over the past two years of traveling the globe and now we’re looking forward to what happens next.

So watch this space…

First days – If this is winter, we’ll be fine..

Time to get used to a new life not on the road.

Not many capitols with this 15mins from the centre.

Being shown around the neighbourhood.

Kiwi Pete – Last of the great road angels!

Pete’s MTB heaven

Pete trying his hand at winter cyclocross

Our new best mate, Loo Loo gets ideas above her station!

Team RTD bus

Team RTD rides

Winter riding 🙂

The Waterfront

Alice doing some publicity for ‘The Places in Between’ presentation

Setting up for the presentation

Pete’s workplace – J’ville Cycles

Our new home.

The first non-canvas home we’ve had since getting married.

Telia enjoys a new, more sedate lifestyle, mostly as a clothes rack!

Our own kitchen! The hight of luxury and comfort.

Taking full advantage of having an oven!

Island bay

meeting the neighbours

Wellington. City-living but not.

New Zealand – One Last Road Trip

July 28, 2014

New Zealand

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So we arrived in New Zealand… our long awaited destination. But what to do now? We were heading to meet a friend in Wellington at the South end of North Island but the temptation to cycle the distance from Aukland quickly dissipated as we realised that it’s winter now in NZ (we haven’t seen a winter in well over a year!) and all of our kit that once was waterproof is now looking decidedly dubious. Alice’s long suffering back also didn’t fancy the prospect of such a hilly route across North Island so we would give ‘Telia’ the Tandem a well-earned break.

However, in deciding that it was the end of us riding our bike as our main mode of transport, a problem presented itself… how do we now get ourselves, Telia and all our kit down south? The answer: ‘Tempi’ the Super Camper Van – a relocation deal that we found between Aukland and Christchurch. The deal was that we got the van for free as long as we delivered it in one piece seven days later in Christchurch.

In getting to Christchurch we would overshoot our destination of Wellington by about half of South Island but then who cares when the opportunity for one last road trip (this time on four wheels) was upon us and at the end of it all loomed the end of a (by now slightly drawn-out) honeymoon…

This is country number 22.