Cycle the North Island, Cape Reinga to Wellington
Description of Cycle the North Island, Cape Reinga to Wellington
This massive trip involves 1,590km of cycling, mostly down off-road trails in some of New Zealand’s most beautiful scenery. Prepare for a hilly ride and rocky roads – the best way to see the countryside at its most dramatic.
Highlights on this trip include an 85km cycle along a sandy beach, experiencing city cycling on your way through Auckland, and having a well-earned rest day in Hobbiton. You’ll love exploring the ferny greenness of the Pureora Forest Park on the famous Timber Trail, and pedalling down lush river valleys as you follow New Zealand’s cycling trails along its waterways.
This trip follows the North Island section of the Tour Aotearoa, a cycling route designed by New Zealand mountain bikers the Kennett Brothers, which is now the route of an annual ‘brevet’ (timed cycle). You’re not against the clock on your trip, though, so spend your time enjoying the scenery as you speed along.
New Zealand used to be known only for its walking trails, but in recent years cycle tourism has brought tourism income to some of New Zealand’s remotest areas. The cycle trails you ride on this trip also provide useful access for conservation and tree planting projects.
With 22 days of pretty much continuous cycling, you need to be fit to enjoy this trip. Dirt or gravel bike experience will help you get the most out of the adventure. Bring your own mountain bike, or hire when you’re here. E-bikes are very welcome.
This trip is fully supported by tour leaders and a support van where you can rest up, or get repairs for your bike. Your support team are on hand to provide refreshments, snacks and buffet lunch. Every day you’ll get a detailed itinerary so you can cycle alone if you prefer, and every evening you’ll meet up to find your accommodation all sorted for the night.
You could also choose to cycle down South Island (1,410km), or the whole of New Zealand (2,950km) instead.
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Responsible Travel
Planet
The environment is our home, the home of billions of animal and plants species and the home of future generations – it is a delicate and highly threatened foundation. Today it is essential that we change our habits at home and in the way that we live and travel and adopt a more caring attitude towards the environment.Reducing Carbon Emissions
- We have planned our vehicles with optimal seating, trailers to minimise the number and size of support vehicles.
- In order to reduce the carbon emissions associated with the transporting of food, we supply and refill bulk fresh water drinking vessels, buy local and in-season produce grown in-country (with the exception of bananas), ideally within 100km of where it is purchased, only buy in-country grown meat and dairy products and in-country brands or dry supplies as much as possible.
Food & Water
We provide balanced, healthy meals with a plant based focus using unpackaged, in-season local vegetables (organic where possible). Meat, dairy and eggs are all FREE RANGE and grown in-country and we do not served commercially caught fish. We minimise plastic and single use packaging as much as possible by shopping at self-fill shops and bring our own containers. We supply and refill bulk fresh water drinking vessels and make sure this is always available to our bikers.
Waste
We seperate all rubbish into compostables, reusables, recyclables and landfill rubbish. Compostables are distributed to local composting/worm farm services, or feed to chickens or pigs on route. Paper/cardboard, glass, plastics recycled as much as possible. We minimise plastic and single use packaging by shopping at self-fill shops and we shop and prepare food carefully as to minimise food waste.
Tree Planting
We all know that trees are good, they suck up carbon, produce oxygen and just make us feel good. The world is losing around a hectare of forest every minute so we plant trees and support native forest regeneration wherever we go. For the Tour Aotearoa we plant two trees for every biker, crew member and support vehicle on tour.
People
For us Social Responsibility is not about donating large sums of money to charity (at least not without thoroughly researching the long-term intentions or effects of the charity) or merely following the status quo. We believe our social responsibility is about supporting locally owned and small business, accommodations, restaurants and support partners and about respecting local cultures, customs and beliefs. We are constantly considering our actions and how we and the people who travel with us can improve our impact on the places we visit.The following goals help us to support local economy at the grassroots level as well as offer our bikers full immersion, genuine experiences (that will sometime be out of your comfort zone!)
- We partner with and support small and localised businesses and individuals and employ local support crew and services.
- Our small group sizes mean that we consider and adjust our social impact in small towns (Don’t take over the place!)
- We do our best treat spiritual, sacred or historical places with the required respect. Help you learn about these places helps to understand and respect the value they hold.
- We choose accommodations, restaurants, shops that align with our values.
- We are 100% against sex tourism, human trafficking, orphanage visits, exploitation of people for tourism
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