The gentle whirring of ebikes on the Timber Trail

A typical scene on the Timber Trail. (Photo: Barnaby Maass)

If you look up the acronym oobs, you’ll see that it stands for out-of-band signalling, a term likely to be familiar only to technology geeks.

I use it to refer to something quite different. Oobs is my abbreviation for oldies on bikes – a rapidly proliferating demographic cohort of affluent superannuitants who have discovered, or rediscovered, the joys of cycling.

I often see groups of oobs riding past my place on the outskirts of Masterton in their high-vis jackets. Many of them have seized on battery-powered bikes as an incentive to get back on a bike for the first time in decades – and who can blame them? It’s healthy, pleasurable and virtuous, enabling people to enjoy the scenery and fresh air without burning fossil fuels or raising a sweat.

Though I say battery-powered, you still have to pedal, but the battery does much of the work. The harder you pedal, the more the battery supplements your efforts.

The best systems flatten hills – or so I’m told. I’ve never ridden an ebike myself, but I have two friends who bought an expensive battery-powered French tandem several years ago and have covered much of the country on it. It’s very heavy, but the batteries (they carry two) enable them to cover vast distances at surprising speed and in relative comfort.

I encountered the oobs phenomenon close-up last week when my grandsons and I rode the 85 km Timber Trail, a mountain-bike route through Pureora Forest in the central North Island.

In the course of the two-day ride I became accustomed to being overtaken by grey-haired riders on ebikes, sitting in a quaintly upright posture (they put me in mind of Miss Gulch in The Wizard of Oz) and pedalling as sedately as if they were on a Sunday morning excursion on Oriental Parade. All I heard was the gentle whirring of electric motors as they passed.

There were dozens of riders on the trail and in terms of age they were a wide mix, from teenagers (my grandsons) to at least one octogenarian. A variety of accents testified to the fact that many were from overseas, although there were plenty of New Zealanders doing the ride too.

We arrived at our overnight accommodation at the Timber Trail Lodge, the halfway mark on the trail, to see a couple of dozen bikes hooked up to chargers. We were the only guests not riding ebikes, though we had seen plenty of riders – mostly younger ones – who were doing it the old-fashioned way, like us.

We shared our dinner table that night with a middle-aged couple from Colorado and the 80-year-old from Dunedin. We didn’t see any young riders at the lodge, so they must have overnighted elsewhere. There are several accommodation options on the trail, including campsites, although none of the younger riders we saw were carrying camping gear. Presumably it had been dropped off for them by a shuttle service.

The Timber Trail (I bridle against that American word “trail”, but have to accept it’s now in common usage) is part of a comprehensive and rapidly proliferating network of bike trails that have been developed around the country in response to the booming popularity of multi-day recreational cycling. The best-known remains the Central Otago Rail Trail.

A sophisticated support infrastructure has developed around these trails, providing transport, accommodation and bike hire. Timber Trail Shuttles took us from their base at Ongarue, north of Taumarunui, to the start of the trail at Pureora and then dropped our overnight bags at the lodge, which is one of the few points on the trail accessible by road. The next morning the shuttle picked up our bags again and took them to the finish.

At the Timber Trail Lodge we were provided with very comfortable accommodation, hot showers and an excellent dinner. The young staff are friendly and helpful and there’s a licensed bar and a roomy lounge with an open fire and a spacious deck overlooking the bush. They even sent us off the next morning with a tasty packed lunch. To someone whose previous experience of multi-day MTB rides mostly involved carting all my own gear and pitching a tent at the end of the day, this was sheer luxury.

The trail itself is superb. Pureora Forest is a magnificent stand of largely unspoiled native bush that stretches almost all the way to Lake Taupo from northeast of Taumarunui. It first sprang into public consciousness in the 1970s, when environmentalists protesting against logging proposals camped on platforms in the treetops. The Muldoon government sensibly responded by giving the forest protected status.

Mountain bike trails are rated from one (easy) to six (extreme). The Timber Trail is classified as 2-3, but that doesn’t mean it’s a pushover. The track is wide and relatively smooth for much of the way and doesn’t require technical riding skill, but the first part involves a steady and at times steep climb to the highest point (971 metres) on the flanks of Mt Pureora. You need to be reasonably fit, although battery assistance doubtless helps.

You also need to be reasonably well prepared. You wouldn’t want a mechanical failure, a serious accident or a medical misadventure, because it’s a remote area and cellphone access is almost non-existent.  Shuttle operators recommend personal locator beacons in case of emergency and have them available for hire at a reasonable cost.

Day two is relatively cruisy, being almost all downhill and mainly following the routes of bush tramways that were built to haul logs out. For riders unsure of their fitness, the 40km ride from the midway point at Piropiro to the finish would be a great introduction to the trail, although they would miss seeing the most spectacular, untouched tracts of forest.

Apart from the bush itself, highlights include several impressive suspension bridges, three of them more than 100 metres long, spanning deep gorges. There are numerous stopping points with views of bush-clad hills appearing to stretch into infinity and in one spot, a glimpse through the haze of distant Lake Taupo.

One of several impressive suspension bridges. (Photo: Gabriel Maass)

On the latter part of the trail, as you get closer to civilisation, points of interest change from natural and purely scenic as evidence of human intervention, such as remnants of old logging settlements and milling activity, becomes more conspicuous.  DOC has made a good job of providing information panels.

DOC has also made sure the trail is well-marked, and here’s a tip: if you don’t see the distinctive trail symbol every few minutes, you’ve probably taken a wrong turning. We did, and wasted a frustrating 40 minutes getting back on course. (My fault for making an assumption that a subsidiary track would take us back to the main one. It didn’t.)

Pureora is noted for its native bird life, but we saw and heard disappointingly few birds. Kaka could be heard in the treetops at the start of the ride but after that, the bush was mostly silent. I was hoping to see or hear karearea (the native falcon), kokako or whio, but no such luck.

One last thought. In 2014 I rode the Heaphy Track and concluded at the finish that as good as it was, you needed to walk it to appreciate it fully. I felt much the same about the Timber Trail (which is part of the Te Araroa Trail from North Cape to Bluff, so you can expect to see walkers as well as cyclists). On a bike, you’re focused for much of the time on riding. I couldn’t help thinking that the Timber Trail invites the more immersive, contemplative experience that only walking can truly provide.

You can read about the Timber Trail here.

Footnote: In case anyone gets the wrong idea, this trip was not what journalists call a freebie. My grandsons and I paid our own way.