Raglan coast road

Day 160, Sunday 28 January 2018.

I took the coast road south from Raglan today. It starts as Wainui Road and becomes Whaanga Road. Initially it’s a nice country road winding past some nice beaches, but then it turns to gravel. Up to Te Toto Gorge, the gravel itself is easy, but the road has numerous potholes and corrugations. The views make it worthwhile.

At Te Toto Gorge, there’s a lookout perched on the edge of a cliff with great views over a natural amphitheatre where Māori once farmed. A track leads down to the beach but it takes 30 minutes just to go down, and the combination of a hot day, armoured jeans and motorcycle boots, and a shortage of time, meant I didn’t go down although I was tempted!

For a few km further south, the road surface improves, presumably because it gets less traffic. Patches of deep gravel then appeared with little warning, and soon I was finding the road very unpleasant, fighting to keep the bike upright as it slipped in the gravel. I was surprised the going was so difficult as this was on my adventure bike and I’ve done a lot of gravel on it before without such a fuss. Also, cars on the road left a large amount of dust in the air which I would prefer not to inhale.

After the junction with Tuturimu Road, the road, now called Ruapuke, is sealed, and I breathed a sigh of relief.