Getting great mileage on a penny farthing
Bike tours are nothing new around the top of the south – unless you’re opting for some Victorian-era elegance in the saddle.
The Oamaru Ordinary Cycle Club’s annual tour ride brought an extraordinary array of costumes and penny farthings through the Nelson region this week as a precursor to the popular Heritage Week in the North Otago town.
Club captain Graham Simpson says the tour has been an annual fixture for around 20 years, with members picking an interesting place to explore each year.
The club caters for those people interested in cycles in general, with penny farthings, vintage safety cycles and recumbent bikes the most commonly ridden modes of transport.
The tours normally last 4-5 days and have started from places such as Mount Cook, Queenstown, Dunedin and Wellington.
‘‘Some years we have more than 40 but it becomes a bit of a logistical challenge... it’s normally a 50-50 mix of penny farthings and vintage safeties,’’ Simpson said.
‘‘We even have one Australian chap this year, and we’ll often pick up the odd overseas rider from America.’’
This year, the three-day ride saw 13 riders from North Otago, the North Island and beyond start at Quinney’s Bush and pedal through to Motueka.
En route to Nelson on Tuesday, they stopped in at Tasman Bay Christian School for a bike demonstration before enjoying lunch at Jester House.
On Wednesday, the final leg saw the party depart Nelson for Quinney’s Bush, with a stopover in Wakefield Village before riders headed home.
Simpson said the tours encountered few traffic problems over the years, and 2017 had been no different.
‘‘Because we’re quite unusual we get a really good response from the drivers – they’ll give us plenty of room and often want to stop for a photo.’’
The end of the tour coincided with Oamaru’s Heritage Week which begins this week.
The event features racing of the cycles around the town’s historic precinct as well as novelty events as part of the Victorian feˆte run by the Oamaru Whitestone Civic Trust.
Although a separate entity from the Oamaru steam punk movement, Simpson said many OOCC members took an interest in both forms of technology throughout the year.
‘‘A lot of us wear two caps, it just depends on what time of the year it is,’’ he said.
‘‘This time of year it’s strictly heritage – give us another six months or so and we’re into steam punk.’’