Kayleigh Brown

Bikepacking with Kayleigh: A Journey Through New Zealand

Growing up in Scotland, Kayleigh developed a love for exploring the outdoors. Later, she moved to the west coast of Australia and became fascinated with watersports like windsurfing and kitesurfing. While working as a sea-kayak guide in Western Australia, Kayleigh learned about bikepacking from a coworker and became interested in it. She decided to embark on the Tour Aotearoa in New Zealand. Despite facing challenges and doubts initially, Kayleigh gradually built up her fitness and completed the 10-week journey.

From Scottish Hills to Australian Shores:

I grew up in a small village in Scotland, surrounded by green rolling hills, family and farm animals. This is where my love for the outdoors began as I had a lot of freedom to roam, cycle and explore new places - as long as I was home before dark.

My family later moved to the rugged, west coast and - despite the freezing temperature - this is where my obsession with watersports, such as windsurfing and kitesurfing began. I read that Australia had some of the best, most reliable winds and waves in the world and I had to go. Long story short, I’ve now been based here for 8 years and absolutely love it.

The Spark of Adventure: Discovering Bikepacking

I was fortunate enough to work as a sea-kayak guide on the beautiful Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia. One of my co-workers at the time was telling me about some epic bikepacking trips she had done in Canada and Iceland. At the time, I had never heard of bikepacking or had any concept of what it involved so this conversation sparked a new interest and my research began. So, in July 2022: I started looking into various bikepacking routes and found the Tour Aotearoa. James Gibson aka “Gibbo” (my boyfriend) and I were already in discussions about visiting New Zealand, so it seemed like the obvious choice. Thankfully, he took almost no convincing to go and travel the country by bicycle and we booked a one-way flight to Auckland.

Conquering the Tour Aotearoa: A New Zealand Odyssey

Our training began at the beginning of the Tour Aotearoa. We cycled 15km on our first day in New Zealand and it nearly killed us. We were questioning our decision to do this trip and our own sanity. But we stuck with it and gradually built up our fitness over 10 weeks.

In my opinion, how much training you need to do depends on what kind of riding you’re doing; if you’re setting out to break records/get from A to B as quickly as possible then you’ll need to train. But if you have the luxury of time, then my advice would be to; enjoy the ride, see everything, smell everything and you might even be lucky enough to meet some wonderful people along the way.

The Route:

Our route selection involved hours of research on various websites such as; bikepacking.com/touraotearoa.nz followed by the logistics of flights, transport, bikes, food preparation, budgeting etc. The gear selection was also fairly time consuming as I was looking for gear that was not only affordable but lightweight. Thankfully, wildearth.com.au is home to a huge selection of equipment and I managed to get everything we needed from their website.

Conquering the "Maunga f*cking tapu" & memorable moments:

The first memorable moment that comes to mind is the Maungatapu in New Zealand. The locals call it the “Maunga f*cking tapu” and for good reason; this track consists of bouldery rocks (around the size of tennis balls) on an extremely steep gradient. A combination that makes it almost impossible to ride. The only option we had was to ‘hike-a-bike’ slowly moving forwards one step at a time.

It’s challenging moments like this where you can experience a mental battle and overcoming that can be difficult. Especially if you're in a remote area with a limited supply of food and water - you have no other option but to push on. In situations like this, you’ll find the determination to move forward will almost, always overcome the desire to give up.

Equally as memorable moments; Drinking sheepdog whisky at the summit of the Duffers Saddle. My almost collision with a running emu. Riding alongside the Whanganui River in torrential rainfall. The beginning of the Tasmanian Trail where we ‘hiked-a-bike’ through a 15 km long muddy swamp. Taking Gibbo horse riding for the first time. Swallowing 7 flies in one afternoon on the Munda Biddi. The 40 km flowing downhill section of road into Reefton. Shanti’s homemade soup after the first snowfall of the year. Gibbo’s gold fever, and so many more. All great memories for different reasons. We’ve been very lucky with no major injuries or equipment failures. The closest we came to it was when the bolt on Gibbo’s pannier rack snapped clean off (we were warned about this) but luckily, he managed to cable tie it back together until we could find an alternative. Moral of the story, carry spares and lots of them.

Finding the Way:
We’ve used a combination of paper maps/phones, so we have been lost many times, which is extremely frustrating at the end of a long day - so if you have a good GPS recommendation, please let me know! The Munda Biddi trail has an incredibly helpful app that gives you information on everything you’d ever need to know, including a map that you can use offline with shops, campsites, aid and water stations.

Pushing limits:

We definitely pulled some huge days - and I say huge because of elevation gain not so much the distance. These long days of climbing on a heavy bike can quickly and easily lead to fatigue - so it’s important to eat, drink and rest often to power you onwards against gravity! We usually travelled between 40-70 km each day so our bikes may have been heavier than those going faster and further. It was important to have all the essentials; tent, stove, mats, water, food, sleeping bags, thermals, jacket etc, with a few maybe “non essentials” such as solar fairy lights and a few little things that make the tent feel more like home. I was also carrying a DSLR camera with two lenses, a drone, a gopro and a laptop to document our travels so there wasn’t room for much else.

We sometimes didn’t cycle as far as we thought in a day and had to quickly find a campsite before dark, as long as the site was flat(ish) and out of sight then we would consider it. On occasion, there was no need to find a campsite as we were approached by kind strangers (in cafes or on the side of the road) who would invite us to their home for a warm meal and a comfortable bed. These strangers were often bikepackers themselves, who wanted to share the story of their adventures and listen to ours. I’ll never forget the kindness and generosity of these individuals.

Mishaps:

Where do I begin? One that springs to mind is not closing the lid properly on a jar of peanut butter and having the entire contents spill throughout Gibbo’s pannier, the second mistake here was carrying a heavy glass jar.

Reflecting on the Journey:

Personally, I found solo bikepacking to be much more difficult and I greatly admire anyone who can do this for such long distances - Steph Devery did over 20,000km solo across 22 countries, incredible! There was one particularly long, hot and frustrating day on the Munda Biddi trail where I sat on the side of the road and sobbed. Usually, I’d come around with a few words of encouragement, music, snacks and a push in the right direction. But being alone it was much harder to pick myself up and get back on the bike.

Motivations to keep going:

Honestly. The promise of a hot fire, food and a pint.