Mark ‘Willy’ Williams was due to reach Bluff last night to complete a mostly off-road length-of-New Zealand bike-packing challenge.
He’d have covered 3018km from Cape Reinga, in the far north, in only 14 days — an average of 217km a day.
Williams undertook the Tour Aotearoa ride to fundraise for the trust’s long-awaited, much-needed trail between Queenstown’s Park Ridge and Kawarau Falls Bridge that’ll allow southern corridor residents to safely bike to Frank-ton.
He’d hoped to raise $30,000 along the way, and on Monday night was closing in on both $30k and 3000km.
‘‘I’m just blown away by the support, I’m absolutely stoked, so a big thanks to everyone that’s followed along.’’
Williams, 52, says the ride’s been ‘‘definitely quite taxing on the old body, but it’s a great way to see the country, there’s some places I’ve never been to, and I’m stoked to have seen them from a bike’’.
Each day he’d get up at 5am, be on the road by 6, and spend about 12 hours on the saddle with food stops on the way — though on Monday, on the way to Haast, he covered 254km in 14 hours 18 minutes.
‘‘It just sort of becomes like a process.’’
From a weather perspective, day 5, the long descent to Mangapurua Landing, in the North Island, was the most challenging.
‘‘We got a real nasty southerly and everything just turned to slop.
‘‘The whole bike got clogged up, the chain wouldn’t stay on, the brakes started failing, everything was covered in mud.’’
As for the most challenging terrain, Williams cites day 10 on the West Coast between Reefton and Ikamatua.
‘‘Drizzle settles in, and the already technical and rocky trail becomes desperately slippery,’’ he writes.
Compared with his 4345km Tour Divide bike-packing ride in North America, in 2024, there were more places to refuel on this trip, he says.
‘‘I’d say that logistically this one’s probably easier, but still a hell of a challenge.’’
