Now, on to a cycling story.... Last week Jean and I left early, rode five miles to the local train station, and then took the train to a town called Featherston on the other side of the local mountain range. From Featherston station we rode in the surrounding area for about 50 miles. It was probably the most quiet, scenic, pastoral countryside in which I have ever spent a day cycling.
This below is the train station about five miles from Steve and Annemarie's house. We parked the bike while waiting for the train, and put our high visibility vests and my slightly wet jacket on the handlebars to dry. When the train came, the bike rode free in the baggage car, and Jean and I had comfortable seats in a near-empty passenger car. Our trip took us about 45 minutes away from Wellington, so the train was empty first thing in the morning. (It was packed with commuters going the other way.)
When we cycled away from Featherston, we came around one bend in the road and had this view of the farms below us:
As we started riding, we'd look to the left and see scenes like this:
And to the right is looked like this:
The road we were on had this much traffic:
And the biggest group of others outdoors on that day were these. (All these shots are impressive when clicked to be seen enlarged, but that's especially true of this one, I think):
The amount of activity around us when we stopped to take off a jacket was this:
In short, it was a very peaceful and enjoyable day. In this part of New Zealand the hills were much gentler, with none of them coming close to the steep ones we traveled over in the north. All in all, it was a great outing.
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