Craigieburn Forest

My car is all packed with food, drinks, stuff and of course my bike. Time to leave Christchurch and head west.

Getting closer to the mountains!

I set up my tent at a campsite in Craigieburn Forest, along a nice stream.

Cooking food. One day I made a simple pasta meal, another day pancakes was on the menu. The other campers (some Germans and a Dutch family) liked the pancakes too!

There are nice MTB trails in the Craigieburn Forest. Hogs back is an easy ride, going through forests and open lands which gives nice views like the one above.

 I had to be on one picture as well, so here it is.

The Hogs back trail involved crossing a few streams as well.

Not all trails were easy. Some had many tree roots, and the combination of steep slopes with extruding tree roots made some tracks too difficult. So one time I left the bike at the campsite and walked the track instead.

One of such a trail goes from the campsite to the summit of Helicopter hill, 1256m high. It is just over an hour walk from the campsite and offers nice views around. See the 360 degree panorama here. The top is all flat, so that a helicopter could land on it.

At night the skies were all clear, which gave fabulous views to the stars.

Hinewai Revisited

Last year, on October 18, 2013, I visited Hinewai Reserve for the first time (see blog post). Yesterday, on December 13th, I revisited it with two new friends: Alfonso and Teun. It was raining on the way to Hinewai, but later the clouds all cleared up as expected.

Not much has changed in the fourteen months, it is beautiful as ever.

We walked all way to the sea and back uphill through the forest, in about 6 hours of walking.

It should be obvious enough which one is Teun and which is Alfonso. One is Dutch, the other is Italian.

All going well!

The famous manager, the white-bearded Hugh Wilson, painting his maquette of the Banks Peninsula. He still remembered me from last year's visit and was happy to see me again!

Back to the car, a nasty surprise was waiting us: I had forgotten to turn off the lights and now the battery was completely flat! There was no mobile phone coverage, and being an automatic you cannot push the car downhill for a rolling start. Hugh himself does not use machines or cars, he maintains the entire forest with his bare hands (with help of a few friends) so would not be able to help us. Visitors were quite rare, and if there were any, they could be anywhere in the forest, and how many of them do have jumper cables?

So how was it that we got the car driving again after five minutes?! By sheer luck, we met another visitor who parked his well-filled van next to ours, and we jump-started our car. Phew.

After enjoying one well-deserved fish-and-chips meal in Akaroa, we finally drove home.

Full album here!

Haven MTB Park

There are a lot of mountainbiking trails around Christchurch. The Port Hills (today), Bottle Lake Forest (Wednesday) and McLeans Island (not visited yet) have a many nice tracks. But slightly further away there are a few hidden gems as well. Haven MTB park, all constructed by volunteers, is located at about 40 minutes driving from Christchurch. You can read all about the park at http://www.havenmtb.org.nz/ . So on one good day, I put my bike in the car and drove to Haven, which turned out to be a wonderful area, exactly suited for my skill level. I will definitely come back one time!

In an old caravan, you can sign the guestbook. The door doesn't close tightly anymore, which is sort of an extreme understatement. The entire carvan is in the process of falling apart, only delayed by the patches of tie-wraps and ducktape. But it is still a caravan, right?!

Beautiful tracks and nice views. You can MTB all way to the top of the hills (using AliTrack followed by Eagle's Nest for example) and have a great view all way around.

One minor incident happend on the Chicken Run track. The front wheel dug into the sand, sliding sideways and the bike collapsed into the position above. No one was hurt by the way, except for a small scratch on my pride. Especially considering that "Chicken Run" is the easy alternative to a more difficult track running in parallel...

Back in New Zealand!

After obtaining my Master of Science degree in Embedded Systems, I decided to go on holiday in New Zealand for eight weeks. (Actually, I made the decision long before, but only arranged the ticket recently). A long journey later, I am officially on the other side of the globe again!

After arrival I picked up my rental car and on Sunday, I spent all day driving around, shopping food, arranging a mountain bike, buying a SIM card, visiting the local barber shop (because of the massive climate change in two days), taking a power nap, cooking for myself and then finally meeting my best two NZ friends in the pub!

On Monday I went walking in the Port Hills. It is nice to wander around its tracks again. Also, one track that was closed last year due to the earthquakes, has been re-opened and is now fully accessible.

Views are good, although a bit cloudy and windy. No problem though: it is summer and with no clouds at all it could get very warm. Only when photographing the stars, the clouds have to go away one time!

The hillside sheep are shy as usual and did not let me come too close. But for a picture, this is fine enough.

From the hilltops, you also have nice views over Christchurch on one side, and Lyttelton on the other.

My rental car, a Mazda Demio.

So I also have a rental car. I already warned the owner of the Ferrari that I had crashed into last year, to watch out for my tail...

Sleeping times are rather odd now. In the last few days, I sleep twice a day for 3-5 hours at irregular times. Eventually my biological clock will adjust itself to the local daylight times, but without structural habits it might take a few more days.

A lot of activity is going on in organizing upcoming trips. But many people have different plans, or are very busy (Zeinab: "I have built a bridge!"). Also, certain people prefer hard trips that are too challenging. Luckily, there are also other people on holiday looking for the same type of trips like me. So, if current plans come out, a few trampers including me will be heading to Hinewai Reserve this Saturday!

Sweden: Urbexing

Fredriksberg is a very small village in the center of Sweden, with around 600 inhabitants. There is no railway station, just one or two buses per day from/to Ludvika.

In the past there lived more people and had been industries in iron, wood and paper. But by the end of the 20th century, the last factories were closed and the village became a tourist resort, with Säfsen Resort as the largest operator. Nowadays the factory buildings are abandoned, desolate and decaying. Photography time!

It was quite easy to get in. Fences had holes, and gates were wide open.

Of course I had to be damn careful where I was walking. But no worries, I stayed close to the gates and avoided the loose-hanging lamps on the ceiling.

More photos here!

Sweden: MTB around Säfsen

The reason why I chose Säfsen as the next destination is simple: MTB. In winter, it is a ski resort; when the snow melts away, MTB tracks are prepared.

Most tracks run over gravel and grassy (off)roads, often also used for tree logging. On Sunday I cycled the Strömsdal Runt, a blue grade 48 km tour but over relatively easy tracks. After a few km's I discovered that I was cycling it in the wrong way, and had to travel in the direction that the signposts were facing to (instead of the pointed direction), because I was too lazy to turn 180 degrees and follow it the right way round. Well, a few times I got in the wrong direction and in the last 10 km's I climbed a high hill in pouring rain which I wasn't supposed to go to at all. At least, when I figured out the right direction, I had a nice downhill ride and my outdoor clothes dried quickly. After a hot shower I was very satisfied with the ride!

Next day, I attempted the red grade Kullern Runt. After a few km's, the track winded through the forest, up and down, with many, many tree roots and rocks scattered across the path. This was difficult. A couple of times I had to walk because it was getting too dangerous to go on on my own, but eventually I got out of the forest. I hadn't come far at all when it started pouring rain again, and I decided to take the quick way home instead of completing the full tour. It simply didn't feel comfortable to go ahead on my own in the Swedish wilderness in poor weather, with very limited communication possibilities.

Tuesday. Started with green-grade Stackberget Runt, which was easy and nice, but too short. I decided to add a few km's of black-grade Säfsen MTB Korta to it, which was a very rocky and difficult path through thick forest, just like the forest part of Kullern Runt. But it was a quite nice ride anyway, pushing my technical skills a little higher.

In the afternoon I had to return my bike, because my bus is leaving at 18:00.

More pictures can be found here!

Sweden: Karlstad

Life doesn't stop in New Zealand. So I decided to continue writing here about my following travels too!

Sweden. A business-and-holiday trip in one.

Karlstad is a small, interesting city; smaller than Enschede but it has everything in it. A lot of water, parcs, flowers, trees, blue skies, and many, many cycling lanes and bridges.



The first three days I attended the Mechatronics conference in Karlstad.

You can see that I am using a subtitling system to understand the spoken text. Professors who were watching over my shoulder wondered which excellent speech recognition software I was using, but I told them that it was a professional text interpreter (Daniel) in The Netherlands who was typing everything for me. We set up a Google Hangout so that Daniel could view and listen the presentation, and I could read his text. It worked very well!

Of course I also gave a presentation myself, about the powered exoskeleton project in New Zealand. It went very well, several audience members enjoyed my presentation.

Can you spot me on the group photo?

After the conference, I hired a bike and cycled around in the town and surroundings. There is a rail trail going north from Karlstad, but it was rather flat so not too exciting for me. And there weren't many MTB tracks around the city, so I decided to move out. But not before attending the Midsummer celebration!

It is the only day in the year that many, many people gather in the parc. They set up a large cross, dance around it in a funny way and play music. I also jumped in to join the dance :)

My cheap hostel didn't have wifi, so I had to go to city centre to arrange my next steps. After a lot of investigations, I found a good destination: Säfsen. It is about five hours from Karlstad by public travel, though you could get there in less than two hours by car.

More about it in my next blog! Pictures from Karlstad be found here!