CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
1176 km from Dunedin to Dunedin, about 17 h 02 of riding. It goes by way of The Catlins, Invercargill, Te Anau and Queenstown. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 950 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
A regional grand route from Dunedin, New Zealand to Queenstown, New Zealand, via The Catlins. Key character: wild coast; farmland; fiords; mountains. Surface: paved.
Dunedin is a Scottish city that happened to be built at the bottom of the world. Settlers of the Free Church of Scotland arrived in 1848 and named it after the old Gaelic name for Edinburgh, Dùn Èideann; they planted churches, a university and a great many stone buildings on the steep green hills around Otago Harbour. The gold rush of the 1860s brought money and made it for a time the richest town in the colony, which explains the Victorian railway station and the grand Octagon at the centre.
Read the complete Dunedin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Dunedin is where the day begins. Next is The Catlins.
The Catlins is a region of southeast New Zealand, a patchwork of rainforest, rocky coast and rolling farmland that most people drive straight past on the way to Invercargill or Dunedin. It sits on the southeastern corner of the South Island, between Balclutha and Fortrose, and it is wilder and quieter than the more famous parts of the south. There are very few towns, a lot of sheep and long unsealed stretches that make the area feel properly remote.
Read the complete The Catlins write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Catlins comes up 126 km in. Next is Invercargill.
Invercargill is the southernmost city of any size in New Zealand, a place of wide, flat streets laid out in a grid, low wooden houses, and a sky that is bigger and windier than you expect. Beyond it there is Bluff, the harbour town on the coast, and then a long stretch of sea before you reach Antarctica. About forty-seven thousand people live here, and the city likes to say it is the end of the line, which is a good reason to take a bike.
Read the complete Invercargill write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
252 km in you reach Invercargill. Next is Te Anau.
Te Anau is the last proper town before Fiordland, and nearly everything about it is a preparation for the wild country beyond. It sits on the eastern shore of the lake of the same name, the biggest lake in the South Island, with the Kepler and Murchison mountains rising on the far side, and about two thousand people live here, serving the hikers, boaters and bus tours that pass through. Maori knew the area as a source of greenstone and a place to hunt weka and eel. In 1948 a doctor named Geoffrey Orbell found a small population of takahe, a large flightless bird thought extinct for fifty years, in a remote valley in the Murchison Mountains across the water, one of the great wildlife stories of New Zealand.
Read the complete Te Anau write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Te Anau, about halfway. Next is Queenstown.
The town sits on the shore of Lake Wakatipu, a long, dark, glacier-carved lake shaped like a lightning bolt, with the Remarkables mountain range rising straight from the far side in a wall of grey rock and snow. A Māori legend says the lake is the burnt outline of a giant, Matau, whose heart still beats under the water, and the lake level does rise and fall in a slow rhythm, a seiche caused by wind and pressure, which is the scientific explanation for the legend. The old coal-fired steamship TSS Earnslaw, launched in 1912, still crosses the lake to a high-country farm.
Read the complete Queenstown write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Queenstown sits at 504 km, about halfway. Next is back through Te Anau.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Te Anau write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Te Anau comes up 630 km in. Next is back through Invercargill.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Invercargill write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
756 km in you reach back through Invercargill. Next is back through The Catlins.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Catlins write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Catlins, late in the day. Next is Dunedin.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Dunedin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 1176 km.