Let's go exploring!

The weather gods were being a bit indecisive yesterday with alternating patches of sun and rain, in amongst a general cold overcast day. By early afternoon, I was sick of sitting around inside and waiting for the weather to play ball, so I said to Scotty "let's go exploring!" and we rugged up warm and headed out for a ride.

We had popped into R&R Sport the night before to buy some warm winter gloves (which ironically I didn't wear on yesterday's ride..) but came across a couple of DCC cycle brochures in there also, one called "Fat Tyre Trails - Dunedin and Surrounds". Listed as Ride R6: Waitati Valley, 35km, 2.5 hours, on a mixture of tarseal and gravel roads - I thought it would be good to head out and give it a go.

It was a bit chilly out there, but the first 50 minutes or so was on the flat or climbing up Leith Valley Rd, then it was a cold (and wet - the rain decided to come back for a bit) descent down Waitati Valley Rd. A couple of stops (once for Scotty to chat to someone he knew who drove by, and another time for Scotty after he punctured..), then it was across the motorway again, up a short pinch, then along and up Mt Cargill Rd and back to North East Valley.

I discovered today that www.mapmyrun.co.nz has changed it's name to http://nz.mapometer.com/en/ and now has some pretty cool features! Here's a screen capture of yesterday's ride plus a nifty wee altitude graph on the bottom. Cool eh!

http://nz.mapometer.com/en/cycling/route_161263.html

It really does feel like winter here in Dunedin now. The temperature was supposedly 6 degrees yesterday while we were out riding but I imagine the windchill on the downhills would have made it fair bit colder. Today, it's 1 degree outside, wet, and there's snow on the hills. Brrrr! Time to curl up on the couch and hibernate inside for the rest of the weekend.