CYCLEWAY PROGRESS

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of leading off a great happy mob of cyclists in the Kaikohe Mayoral Cycling challenge, a fun event organized by Sport Northland and supported by FNDC, to be repeated next Saturday in Mangonui and again next Sunday in Kerikeri. Make sure you are part of it!

	Mayor Wayne Brown

The Mayoral Cycling Challenges take place annually and are aimed at getting all of us off the TV couch and onto bikes for fun and health, plus for those of you who vainly take Lotto tickets each week, there is a brand new Avanti bike worth $650 to be won by both kids and adults. Given that numbers entering are usually less than 100 per event, that is a lot better odds than Lotto offer and the prize comes with health benefits.

Kaikohe is a pretty good town for the cycle challenge as there are good tar sealed roads on the south side of town that lead you quickly into rural settings without competing trucks. Kids of all ages from five years to seventy entered on bikes ranging from ancient shockers worse than mine to sleek carbon fibre rockets weighing only 6.8kilograms that cost $15,000!!!!

The ride is real fun with the pack including all shapes, sizes and conditions all wanting to enjoy and participate. Let’s hope plenty of you show up this coming weekend. Mangonui is a lovely little coastal town, but other than along the harbour edge, it is a bit limited in cycle routes without venturing onto State Hiway 10 to compete with monstrous logging trucks, but Kerikeri offers safe urban protected cycle routes.

All this leads me to a very positive update on Far North’s own big ticket cycle-way that recently got government approval of a budget of $4m. Tracy Dalton, who is chairperson of the Western Community Board came to me last year with the idea of converting the old abandoned railway line from Rangihoua on the Hokianga Harbour through to Kawakawa, then on to Opua using the restored rail engine, the Gabriel.

This would allow a coast to coast cycle-way to be put in place which would kick off all sorts of small tourism opportunities, much as it has for the Otago cycle-way. I jumped at the idea and we set about arranging access to the old rail route, by now in the hands of On Track who quickly declared their support. Not long after this the Government got the idea for a National cycle-way and asked for applications, so we put forward the Coast to Coast up here.

Like most government things it all got a bit bureaucratic and overly consultant driven, but eventually they have stated that we are eligible for $4m of funding for the project. Even though their consultants came up with the huge figure of $12m for the whole Coast to Coast route, the $4m on offer is excellent news as it was way more than either Tracy or I thought was needed in the first place and we can certainly get the thing up and running with a bit of old fashioned Far North ingenuity. It is a cycle-way after all and riders can get off and push over the odd drain if we can’t afford a fancy bridge for every ditch to cross.

Anyoldhow, the cycling thing is good for the Far North and for every one of us, so get on your bike and I’ll see you next weekend