Fraser's fables: Queen Charlotte Track

We were supposed to have two days cycling the Queen Charlotte track in the Marlborough Sounds but our first day dawned dull and rainy, for the third day in a row after a damp trip up the West Coast. Not very encouraging for an early start and not good weather for cycling, so we changed some ferry bookings, borrowed some big baggy and not very becoming ponchos and set off to the start of the track by boat, Ships Cove, for a day of walking instead.

Weka foraging for food on a rainy start at Ships Cove

More Weka, there were plenty of them and very curious

Lunchtime was at Furneaux Lodge

Typical Marlborough Sounds view, spoiled by the rain and grey clouds

Fortunately, the day improved. By 11am the rain had all but stopped and rather than catch our ferry to Punga Cove from Furneaux Lodge, we walked and covered the full 27km just after 3pm.

The next day was much better and our mountain bikes had been dropped off at Punga Cove the afternoon before, so we set off at the comfortable start time of 9am with about 50km to cover by 4pm, to catch the boat home. We thought we'd do it easy...... how wrong we were.

This is more like it, day 2 views

Kelley about to tackle some steep rocky downhill.

The cycling was really tough and included numerous stretches that were simply unrideable. A lot of it was just too steep and although the track had recovered quite well after all the rain, there was still a bit of mud around. We were hard at it until 2.30 when, with 12km still to go, we decided it was going to be a bit close for comfort so we changed our ferry booking and got an early pick up. Was a great day though, the flat and downhill sections were great fun and views like the below were just brilliant.