Priest and Inch had worked out how much a car and petrol plus ferry crossing would cost, The Source said they would help us with that. Shout out to them for that. To be fair to Inch and Priest they did a pretty good calculation. We had talked about camping the whole time, and with perfect scenery everywhere, plus being summer it seemed like a pretty good idea. So we bought tents with us and Craig Stevens gave us some camping chairs, so we were set, that's pretty much all you need for 5 weeks on the road. Camping in NZ is really easy, you can pretty much camp wherever, within reason. 

So the trip had started with myself (Lima), Matt Priest and Andrew Inch Thomson, we were there from start to finish. Up in Auckland Craig Stevens helped us out a bunch, but there was a good crew of people who we had already met or knew of which we hanged out with. Its cool meeting some many people along the way. Down in Queenstown we were meeting a bunch of people, it was our holiday within a holiday. Jonny Devine now lives there and let us camp in his garden whilst about 6 or 8 other English lived in his house. Cheers Jonny. Martyn Tambling our Verde UK TM arrived in Queenstown, he went out with a few guys ( Neil, Pope and Toby ) from his way and it just happened we were gonna be there at the same time. Life is perfect sometimes right. Poll and John Scott flew into Queenstown and were gonna join us with the trip back up to Auckland. I broke my elbow and wrist whilst in Queenstown, this became a slight inconvenience. Whilst being in a 90º cast up to my shoulder, someone would cut up my eggs in the morning, whilst someone else would help put my sleeping bag away. A good crew is a must when living on the road for so long. Just after this photo was taken, John and Inch wanted to take a long exposure shot with the stars. They put torches in there tents so they would also be lit up, they also forgot to close the zip on the tents. Little did they know that they would be sharing there tents with all the mosquitos in NZ that night.

Our rough plan was to start in Auckland and drive down to Queenstown, then back up again. When it came to spots to ride, my research was pretty low. I had just looked at all the scenery stuff I wanted to visit. But I had a pull out map, so Craig, with help from George Bolter, drew down every spot they knew of onto the map. That was really handy as it gave us a rough route of sort, to make on the way down, then do the opposite on the way back up. Martyn Tambling our Verde TM in the UK was heading to Queenstown, and Jonny Devine was living there, so when he arrived seemed like a good time for us to arrive. Considering we didn't plan these trips together it all worked out surprisingly well. We almost (minus MJ) had the full UK team together over the other side of the world. With the added characters like Neil Pengilley and Dean Mayo our little holiday within the holiday was awesome. 

I can see how people get stuck in the Queenstown bubble, the place really does live up to the hype. But after a week of staying there, I couldn't wait to get back on the road with our crew to explore more of this amazing place. Only this time the journey back would be with a 90º cast on my right arm from having too much fun at the trails. I do enjoy the ease of staying in one place and the routine is nice, but the unknown of where you will camp that night or what you will see, especially in a place like NZ is a million times better. 

So we went to this bowl a couple of hours south of Auckland in a place called Raglan. Dialled setup, lovely scenery but really windy so left. We had heard there was another park not far from Wellington which had the same bowl but better. We trusted George Bolter advise, and he was right! So after a couple of days travelling south, hitting up other spots and scenery we arrived here completely forgetting that this was the place. An another amazing spot, completely empty except one young rider who wanted Inchs autograph and a girl called Ellie who was ripping around the bowl.