Back to the mountains! | Continuing my solo motorcycle camping trip through New Zealand [E8- S6]

All right, time has come for departure. Kinga is staying behind to do some work. Yes. And I'm heading west to the coast. Oh, this is nice. So I've been traveling with Kinga for a couple days. And many of you already know her and know that she's been traveling around the world. What many of you might not know is that Will used to be on the road for even longer than Kinga has now. Yeah. You've been on the road for nine years. Nine years in total, yeah. And you did have a pretty big following. Also on social medias until accounts were hacked and stolen. Yeah. We had a few hundred thousand followers, which is amazing. With a few million viewers for some of the videos, which again was amazing, especially 15 years ago. And yeah, unfortunately the account got hacked into and I couldn't prove I was me. And my whole page was deleted along with Instagram and everything else. Yeah. But you still have all the memories, all the stories. Oh, definitely. You guys have so many. I've been listening here all morning to their stories, just, oh my God, they're experienced so much. Yeah. But tell us about like, where did you go? Like what was your nine years of travel? So for the first bunch of years, it was, I had a gardening company in Scotland where it meant I didn't work for six months through the winter, which is amazing. So I just got on the road and just traveled as far as I could all around Europe, North Africa, Turkey, wherever I could get to. Because the thing is you're really afraid of flying. Yeah, I don't fly at all. I'm absolutely terrified of flying. So to get anywhere, I have to ride a motorbike or take a vehicle or a boat. Yeah. So whenever your buddies were like, oh, we're going to Spain or whatever. Yep. You were just, oh, see you there in a couple of days. See you there in three or four days. And I'll rock up on a bike and they'll do their thing. And then I'll go off and just carry on adventuring and just found that accidentally that the adventure life was perfect for me before it was even a thing really. Yeah. Further down the road, we decided to do a big trip to Australia. But we're now in New Zealand. That was over the space of two years that we traveled. And it was amazing meeting amazing people doing amazing things. It's just brilliant. Yeah. So what approximately was your route? That route was through Europe, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, across the Caspian, Kazakhstan. A few of the other stands, too many. Yeah. And then we got a group ride to go through China because you have to be guided. A lot of people say, how do you have funds for the trip and things? My budget for the whole thing was about £10,000 all up. And two thirds of that was 10 days in China and seven days in Myanmar for guides and visas. Yeah. It was crazy. So yeah, so we went through China and then Pakistan, India, Nepal, India, then into Burma, which was amazing. Southeast Asia, all the way down to the bottom. Then Australia. From Australia, got a boat to New Zealand. And I've been stuck here for seven years. Just when we were thinking of leaving, the pandemic was just starting. So we quickly applied for residency. All of my travels were on the same bike. It was a BMW, a 2002 BMW 650 Dakar, but with a lot of modifications. Suspension and engine mods and all sorts to make it a proper adventure bike. I did 420,000 kilometers on that bike in nine years in 86 countries. Holy shit. Yeah. Oh my god. A lot of traveling. Does that tickle your brain a little bit to be talking about adventures and traveling? Yeah, having the girls here for the last two days. I just want to be on the road again. I can't wait to be back on the road one day. Well, if you do, we might see you on some socials. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So I'll start up another page if I'm going to do it. I'll do it in my own way. Seeing how the girls do it is crazy. There's just a few cameras going on, yeah. I had like an iPhone 2 and just went, oh, that's a nice photo. And that was it. That's what you have to do back in the day. Well, look out for him on social media, essentially. And he's been a fantastic host. So random that we ended up here, but I'm so glad we ended up here. Yeah, nice. Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone. All right, time has come for departure. Kinga is staying behind to do some work. Yes, it's my working day. Have more baths. Yeah, one more bath and work. And I'm heading west to the coast. With nice weather, apparently. Yeah, for a couple of days, hopefully. And then you'll come after. That's right, yeah. Who knows? Maybe I'll catch you somewhere later on. It's not the biggest island, so yeah. Yeah, it was so good to ride with you. Likewise. It's really a pleasure. It's so good staying here. You're more than welcome any time. It's a pleasure to have you. Thank you. You're welcome. Yeah. Bye. Oh, the blinking. How do you make it blink? You sound so good. There's lights in there. Oh, wow. All right, so the plan for today is already 1.30. In the afternoon. So we'll just see how far I get. But I'm heading west towards the coast. Towards Arthur's Pass, which is supposed to be really, really cool. We'll just take it from there and see how far I get. Should be just over 200 kilometers to get over the pass. And down on the other side for a campsite. Spending some days in company of other riders adds so much to the experience. But the journey has to continue. Getting back on the road together with my new bright yellow riding buddy. We headed towards the mountains and horizon and I knew good stuff was coming. Oh, this is nice. Into the mountains. Check out this place. Holy shit. What caught my eye as I was approaching was these huge limestone rocks in the distance. This is Castle Hill Rock, a Kura Tawiti conservation area. More than being a fascinating site in stunning surroundings, this area also holds significant cultural importance for the Naitahu tribe, who have a long history of living and farming in this region. Supposedly, Kura Tawiti translates to the treasure from a distant land and refers to the sweet potato, kumara, that was once farmed in abundance here. All right, that was really cool rock formations. Oh no, it's stuck in here. I have located a campground not far from here. 46 kilometers. A dock campground. I was a little bit hesitant about camping here up in the past, because apparently this is the home of the sandflies. And oh my god, you guys, the sandfly bites. Oh shit. I mean, I've heard that they're supposed to be itchy, but it's been extremely itchy. I have like 20 bites, not even joking, on my legs. I've showed you already. And they still just itch so bad. Like, I literally wake up in the middle of the night because it's so itchy. And they say, you know, oh, well, just don't itch. Um, yeah, there's no way. Like, how am I not supposed to itch? It's so itchy. These surroundings are just epic. Definitely worth the ride. Still 25 minutes to go. Let's go. Nice place to pitch the tent. Klondike Corner. All right, so I set my camp up here. After a while, I heard another motorcycle approaching. Didn't take much of it. But then this lady approached. Hi. This is Sam. Hello there. She's, you're from England? I'm from England. Yeah. And you have quite the bike. I'd like to introduce you to Sally. This is Sally. She has a sidecar. So it's Sally's sidecar. She's 39 years old. And she is my company for approximately two months whilst I just travel around New Zealand. How awesome is that? So you, you came from New Zealand. You bought this bike. I bought it before I came out. And I, um, my trip was delayed a little bit. So the man who I bought it from kindly housed it. I picked her up in January. And here we are. Here we are. And she's going very well. So cool. My camping stuff. My food supply. Predominantly it's just for the book. And it is quite a book. And how long are you going to stay on the road he said? I'm probably only going to be on the road for about eight to ten weeks. That's enough for this. This is, this is my maiden voyage. And this is good. This is all good. Because you have a bike back home in England as well. I have a bike at home, yeah. That was a Ducati Scrambler 400. But this is the dream. And this is what I will pursue. You can read about you in, uh. You can read about me. I'm on the front page of the New Zealand Sidecar Federation magazine this month. There you go. You can check it out. Good evening guys. And it really is a good evening. What a fantastic few days it has been. Before anything, let me just show you on a map where we've been. And where I am right now. Last time I showed you, it was up here in Hammerspring. Then we rode all the way down here to Christchurch. Where I had the bike service, went to the motor social event. I went on a little ride around the smallest crater of the volcanoes here. Today I've ridden here. And I'm here-ish. Just outside of the Otters Pass. But inside the Otters Pass National Park. The plan for tomorrow is to continue along this route down here. Along the coast. And you'll just see how far we get. There's a whole lot of different small roads in and out here. That I might want to check out. Super nice camp spot here. Nice and quiet. Even though there's a lot of people here, it's just still nice and quiet. And I don't know if you can hear the river. Which is such a nice sound to sleep to. Oh, I love it. The night sky outside is so absolutely stunning. The moon is out. The sky is so packed with stars. The night sky here with the stars is apparently one of the best ones in the world. Meaning New Zealand is one of the best places in the world to watch the stars apparently. It's just so clear. And there's so many stars. It's so beautiful. I wish I could capture it on camera. But yeah, I'm not that good yet. Everything is just so exactly how I pictured it will be. Which I had high expectations. Really happy. Let's just hope it continues this way. The weather forecast says the west coast should be good. For another couple days. So, fingers crossed. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this episode. And I hope I'll see you again in the next. Good night.