Our last day on the rail trail dawned with blue skies and a good forecast. We had to start early (6.30 breakfast) to finish our ride in time to catch the shuttle bus to Queenstown at 12 noon.
Over breakfast we heard that after we’d gone to bed, Steve and Pam continued chatting to the Waipata Hotel landlord and his wife, Stephen and Sarah Jones. Steve discovered that he’d played rugby with the guy in the same club in Sydney when they were young men. This brought lots of reminiscences and some extra wine consumption. What an amazing coincidence!
We set off from Waipata on the bus to pick up the trail at the tiny hamlet of Hyde. From there it was 31 kilometres to the end of the trail at Middlemarch. It was cold but sunny and we made good time.
The track had dried out well from the previous day of heavy rain 
and we had no problems with puddles as we rode along the Rock and Pillar range. We passed the memorial to the famous Hyde railway disaster of 1943.
We came upon some sheep that had strayed onto the track and they ran in front of us for a while until they found a place to escape off to the side. We saw plovers, yellow hammers, lots of kites, rabbits, hares, cattle and a bloody great big Angus bull. It was a lovely ride, partly because it was gently down hill.
The trail ends at Middlemarch because from there to Dunedin, the railway still exists. We saw the Taieri Gorge Train arrive, pulled by two huge diesel locos.
We congratulated ourselves for finishing the trail with no obvious injuries and only minor aches and pains. We covered 130 kilometres on gravel tracks over 3 1/2 days. We missed 30 kilometres because we decided not to ride in the rainstorms. Not bad.
We had some lunch and said farewell to our guide and driver, Joyce, who wa
s 
very patient with us and looked after us well.
We then caught our shuttle bus which retraced most of our route before heading across the mountains to the spectacular city of Queenstown.
I’d been taking pictures of some of the spectacular clouds on our route (see above). There were some big lenticular clouds, which mean fabulous wave lift for glider pilots. NZ is famous for these, but I didn’t realise they had names until I read one of the sign boards along the track.
“One of the worlds most famous and dramatic lenticular cloud formation appears over the Strath Taieri. Called the ‘Taieri Pet’ it is a rare lenticular billow cloud that depending on atmospheric conditions can be a single cloud or an enormous, awe-inspiring pile of cloud layers.”
Queenstown offers lots of adventurous things to do. We will NOT be bungy-jumping, but will try some of the other offerings.
