CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Out of Cromwell, one way: 663 km, roughly 13 h 42 in the saddle. The stops in between: Queenstown / South Island and Glenorchy Lake Road. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,300 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 107 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Cromwell sits where two of Central Otago's big rivers used to meet, and these days the meeting happens under water. When the Clyde Dam was finished in the early 1990s, the rising Lake Dunstan swallowed the old town centre and much of the gorge, and what survived of the gold-era main street was rebuilt as a heritage precinct on the new lakeshore. It is worth the short detour: schist cottages, a bakery or two, and the eerie knowledge that the original riverbank is somewhere below the boats.
Read the complete Fuel stop near Cromwell write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Glenorchy Lake Road is where the day begins. Next is Queenstown / South Island return.
At just over three thousand metres, it is the highest peak in New Zealand outside the Aoraki Mount Cook region, and its steep faces and hanging glaciers attract mountaineers from around the world. It sits in the national park, among beech forest, river flats and high basins, a landscape that few people ever see.
Read the complete Queenstown / South Island return write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Queenstown / South Island return comes up about 238 km into the recorded legs. Next is Glenorchy Lake Road food stop.
No road reaches it. The country here is high, wet and wild, with beech forest, alpine lakes and jagged peaks, and the Humboldt mountains stand over it like a wall. A rider arrives on the lake road and looks up at it from below.
Read the complete Glenorchy Lake Road food stop write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
A break here. Next is Photo stop near Te Anau.
Photo stop near Te Anau closes the day.
Fuel stop near Cromwell → Queenstown / South Island return is 238 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Queenstown / South Island return → Glenorchy Lake Road food stop is 159 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Glenorchy Lake Road food stop → Photo stop near Te Anau is 266 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.