For a group of Australian women cycling the Otago Central Rail Trail recently, it was a case of out of the oven and into the fridge.
Most of the 11-strong group taking part in the Adventurous Women tour were from Perth, where they left temperatures of about 40degC.
After being soaked with heavy rain and then buffeted with strong winds last week, there were still plenty of broad smiles in the chilly morning air.
‘‘It's minus six by the feel of it,'' Deborah John, from Newcastle, quipped.
Adventurous Women, founded by Sue Hile, provided adventure travel, tours, activities and events specifically for women.
Janette Philp, who lives in Perth but grew up in Otago, was trek leader for the New Zealand Hike and Bike Adventure.
It started in Queenstown earlier in the month, with the women walking the Milford Track, before spending four days cycling the 152km rail trail.
Adventurous Women was founded about 2006 and now had membership of about 2000 around the world, with the majority in Australia.
Trips and outings ranged from movie nights and ‘‘sip 'n cycle'' events through vineyards, to treks Mrs Philp has led to Everest Base Camp and the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea.
Most of the women were in their 50s, although Mrs Philp's 24-year-old daughter accompanied her to Everest Base Camp, and many were either single or their partners were not interested in travel.
Her 80-year-old mother Alice Sinclair, who lives on the Taieri, had always wanted to cycle the rail trail and she joined the group.
Despite some inclement whether, Mrs Philp said the group ‘‘loved every minute'' of walking the Milford Track.
On the third morning, they were held at their hut following torrential rain overnight, with water apparently waist deep in parts of the track and 130kmh winds.
When they were able to continue, they had taken only about 30 steps from the hut when they had to wade through ankle-deep water.
But the weather cleared by the time they reached the Mackinnon Pass, the highest point on the track, and they also had two nice days of weather.
It was the second time Mrs Philp had cycled the rail trail, although it was the first time Adventurous Women had done it.
She was heading to Queenstown to walk the Routeburn and Kepler tracks as a ‘‘recce'' for future visits, with plans to also do the Routeburn and the Alps 2 Ocean cycle trail next year.
The weather had been variable on the rail trail and they did encounter some ‘‘stifling'' heat, along with the wind and the rain.
Being back in her home region of Otago was particularly emotional for Mrs Philp.
‘‘It gets me right in here,'' she said, indicating her heart. ‘‘It brings tears to my eyes.'' She loved the contrast of the landscape and also the whole concept of how the railway line was originally built.
It had brought ‘‘so much wealth'' to the region and everyone spoken to along the trail said it was bringing ‘‘more and more people''.
Ms John, who was travelling with a friend with whom she went backpacking when she was 18, described the trip as ‘‘our 50th thing''.
She had never travelled in a group before but she described her fellow trampers and cyclists as a ‘‘terrific bunch of people''.
Walking the Milford Track was a huge challenge, although that was more due to carrying a 15kg pack than the actual walking, she said.
She described the scenery from her bicycle seat as ‘‘absolutely beautiful'' and she enjoyed the many changes of landscape.
For Noela O'Keefe, of Perth, the trip was her 58th birthday present to herself and she described her first trip to New Zealand simply as ‘‘wonderful''.
She preceded the tour with a road trip down from Auckland, staying at backpackers, before meeting up with the group.
She was having a slightly easier ride on an electric bicycle, as she suffered from lupus, a chronic auto-immune disease,
which meant she would otherwise have been physically unable to complete the trail. But she still had to pedal, she said.
She did confide that the panniers on the bicycles were often loaded up with wine bottles.
‘‘For some reason, it's more of a wine trail than a rail trail but we've had some fun,'' Mrs Philp added.
Dave Thomson, who works for Middlemarch-based Cycle Surgery Rail Trail Ltd, said the international market had almost doubled in the past 18 months, with the number of Australian cyclists stronger than ever before. He attributed to that word of mouth.
Tourism New Zealand also had a campaign this year in Australia and he expected that to pay dividends in the future. Another exciting aspect was the increase in the number of Asian groups.
With an injection of $15million spent by rail-trailers each year - ‘‘that's a lot of beers and coffees and sandwiches and sleeps and bags moved'' - it had created a lot of jobs that did not exist before the trail opened in 2000, he said.
