GLYNN WORLD Part Deux: The Forgotten Highway

I had some time off before Xmas and put this to good use by jumping on the motorbike and heading off to Auckland to see a friend.

The Forgotten Highway as its name suggests is a little used road that runs for 150km from Stratford to Taumarunui through rugged and sparsely populated country. In the biking world the road has something of a mythical reputation and was definitely on the must do list.

I decided to travel up to Auckland via the Forgotten Highway even though this meant adding a good 300km onto what was already a long trip. To break up the journey I decided to stay the night at the highways one and only village, Whangamomona.

After and uneventful enough journey I finally reached Stratford and turned onto the Forgotten Highway and set off on the 63km to Whangamomona. This section of the road had more traffic than I thought it would but was well surfaced, tight and twisty and passed over a couple of saddles before finally arriving at the nights stop. I stayed at the rather quaint and old fashioned Whangamomona Hotel which was all creaking floorboards and I am sure one or two ghosts as well – splendid stuff.

As is the way in rural New Zealand the hotel also serves as the pub and is the focal point of the village. As luck would have it the local Xmas parade started not long after I arrived so I sat outside had a few beers, some fish and chips and took in the action.

The next day I set off early, as I still had to complete the Forgotten Highway and even after that still had a long way to go to Auckland.

This next section is where the serious business started as it became narrower and more demanding including a fairly long single lane tunnel. After about 20 minutes the tarmac stopped and the road became unsealed for the next 10km or so. I am emphatically not an off-road rider, particularly when on a sports bike, so this was real buttock clenching stuff. The first few hundred meters were the worst as the gravel seemed to be particularly deep with the bike squirming and sliding all over the place. I almost turned back at this point but decided having come this far, to tough it out. After a while I sort of got a rhythm going, relaxed a bit and got through this section just fine. The reward after the gravel was the best riding of the trip. The scenery was great, the road was lovely and twisty but not too tight and was great fun with the proviso the speed was kept down to sensible levels (there were a fair number of rocks on the road, not to mention cow poo). I didn’t see a single car on this entire section.

The rest of the ride was much less exciting and I eventually made it up to Auckland.

Auckland is not exactly my favourite city but it was on its best behaviour when I was there. The weather was lovely and I had a very chilled out time with my friend and her family.

I needed to get back to Wellington in a hurry so it was the boring but fast SH1 for me. Boring it certainly was, but not without incident as I nearly got knocked off, got nicked for speeding (109km/hr on the Desert Road - oh well) and left my tank bag behind! A nice trip all the same.