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: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Dunedin it runs 589 km to Queenstown; allow about 8 h 31 of riding. The stops in between: Catlins, Invercargill and Te Anau. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 950 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
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 Catlins.
The Catlins is the part of New Zealand that people tend to skip, and then regret skipping. It is a ragged southeastern coast, running from Waipapa Point on the Southland side to the Clutha River mouth, a country of dense rimu and rata forest that comes down to the sea, of black cliffs, remote beaches and heavy Southern Ocean surf. Papatowai is a tiny settlement near the middle of it, with Balclutha a long way north and Owaka a smaller place to the east, and you feel the isolation immediately. The road, part of the Southern Scenic Route between Dunedin and Invercargill, is mostly sealed but narrow and twisting, rarely straight for more than a few hundred metres.
Read the complete Catlins write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Catlins comes up about 118 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 260 km into the recorded legs 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, late in the day. 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.
Finish at Queenstown. That is the ride.
Dunedin → Catlins is 118 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Catlins → Invercargill is 142 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Invercargill → Te Anau is 158 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Te Anau → Queenstown is 171 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.