South Island day 18: Otago rail trail, St Bathans

Today we parted ways temporarily. Raewyn and I were staying two nights at Lauder, then biking from Lauder to Ranfurly in one day, while her parents were taking two days on the trail to get to Ranfurly, overnighting at Oturehua.

We headed off on some backcountry roads to St Bathans, an old gold mining village and site of the Blue Lake, once the largest man-made pit in the southern hemisphere. Again it was uphill going there and downhill coming back – although we only really noticed the difference in that we were able to go about 10 km/hr faster coming back.

(Total distance biking: 55.5 km, 127.1 km cumulative)

Heading up to St Bathans

Blue Lake

Blue Lake

Riding through the 'moonscape'

Better weather coming back to Lauder