The plan

Let's get 3 things straight - I bite off more than I can chew, I don't like the idea of missing something and I don't like rest days (they only make you tired!). The perfect ingredients for a recipe for disaster if you're planning a long distance cycling trip? Or an exciting combination of driving forces that lead to you stretching your horizons and testing your limits? Both, and - as they say in Sweden.

My first impression when I googled New Zealand and looked at the "images" feed rather than the "web" feed was of overwhelming awe at the beauty of the place. Everywhere! The Southern Alps, the West coast of the South Island, the isolated interior of the North Island, towering volcanoes, endless sandy beaches, fjords, glaciers, dramatic coast roads, rolling farmland. So what route could I choose which would allow me to see as much of this natural beauty as possible?

First decision was where to start and in the end that boiled down to the best value for money return flight from the UK. By taking a return flight London-Christchurch I could easily get myself up to the North Island for the first part of the trip, when the weather will be already warmer there, then down to the South Island and follow an anti-clockwise path back around to Christchurch.

Starting and ending in the same place has 3 clear advantages:

1. If I didn't then I could hardly call my "concept" Cycling Around In Circles - could I?
2. I pack my bike in a hard case for the flight. By booking the same accommodation for the first night on arrival in New Zealand and for the last nights before departure then I can arrange with the hostel staff to stick my bike box in their cellar for a few weeks.
3. I can plan to get around and back to Christchurch a few days before flying home. Then if for some reason I get delayed I've got those days as a buffer and just need to move all my subsequent accommodation bookings.

So, having decided on Christchurch and basically an anti-clockwise direction of travel, I got on with the detailed planning of the overall route and of each day's itinerary.

To cut a (very) long story short it's ended up at being 5,900 kms in 38 stages. A little bit more than I'd thought from the beginning, but at least I've been able to plan in almost all of the most attractive areas and destinations. I've spent hours exploring the web - taking inspiration from all sorts of sources. I found a small group from Australia via Strava (cycling community site) who toured the South Island, I've followed (in reverse) the route of a Rapha Continental Ride from last year, I've looked into endless "Top 10 places to visit" sites for New Zealand and I've dragged that little Google streetview man around my screen for mile after mile to examine road quality etc. My planning tool of choice is www.ridewithgps.com. It's a fantastic tool and then it's just a click to download the routes to my Garmin 800 cycle computer. Not forgetting to buy the mini SD card with the detailed NZ map on it and I'm all set and ready to go.

Some days are long (a few are over 200 kms) and some are a bit shorter (shortest day is 65 kms). Some are very hilly, others flat or - on one or two occasions - mostly downhill. It looks like being an incredibly varied route, even before factoring in the 2 most extreme variables when cycling - the temperature and the prevailing wind. So for sure I will have some joyous days and I will have some days from hell!

And that's the appeal of cycling. It's never the same and it's often excruciatingly tough. But after a warm shower, a good meal, a glass of wine and a good night's sleep we humans have this most amazing ability of forgetting the pain and a new day dawns full of new possibilities.

All detailed route maps and profiles, with hyperlinks to the wikipedia entry for each destination, can be found on the separate page here on the blog titled of course Routes & Profiles.

Anyway - did I say something about biting off more than I can chew? To put this crazy plan into perspective it might be interesting to know that Mark Beaumont, when setting the world record for cycling around the world, cycled less distance per day than I'm planning. Though Mark's "circle" was a bit wider than mine ;)