Waiomu

Day 316, Tuesday 3 July 2018

I led an Auckland Ulysses ride to Waiomu today. I was interested to see what progress had been made on repairing the Thames Coast Road since I led a similar ride in January. Most of the road works have gone, leaving the road in reasonable condition. One short stretch of road works are still there, with traffic restricted to one lane, but there was no hold up.

With the new tax on petrol in Auckland, we took advantage of the cheaper prices in Thames to fill our tanks on the way home.

We came back via the Kaiaua—Kawakawa Bay road. When I last rode this a couple of weeks ago, it was in reasonable condition with a few road works still in place where the road had been severely munted by storms over the last couple of years. However, the last two weeks of weather have made that area north of Kaiaua considerably worse, and we found one section where loose metal had just been dumped on the road and not yet graded, which is a difficult surface for road bikes to navigate. Another section, on the descent into Kawakawa Bay, had two areas of road works down to one lane. The repair of these roads is barely keeping up with the rate of weather damage.

A most enjoyable day out, with fine weather albeit rather cold.

Distance travelled: 275 km. Total distance so far: 40,343 km