Like any sensible Brit given half a chance, Graham Beaumont flew south for the winter and road tripped around New Zealand. Riding every day saw them cover nearly every trail destination in the country and they seemed to meet most of the locals too!

I arrived in Rotorua, 'The Sulphur City' as the sun set for my third visit in the last decade, this time, excited for a slightly different trip to the norm. Four of my closest and trusted friends from home agreed to join me on a mountain bike trip of a lifetime, six weeks in the New Zealand summer, escaping the harsh reality of tremendous flooding across my hometown and vast areas of the UK, affecting hundreds of thousands of people during the festive period. New Zealand strangely feels like home to me, despite never actually living there. My mum moved around eight years ago, and I have been to visit three times, so have a good idea of the landscape and have my bearings set up pretty well, with that said there is always so much more to discover! In many ways it's like the flooding never happened back home for us as we missed all of the carnage, with that said the photos and news were enough to shock us from afar. With no real fixed agenda, a few promises in the pub of fantastic riding and sunny climates we had done it, and the trip had begun.

As my family moved out here some years ago, it has been a relatively regular haunt for my bike and me since they emigrated. This time, my sister Hollie had taken some time out of her busy schedule as a Yogi/Yoghurt Weaver to join us on what was going to be the most incredible trip to date. We had big plans for riding everything we could get a hold on, which turned out to be nearly every day for six weeks!  Our only other real plan was to road trip down to the South Island for New Year and spend it in Queenstown. So with some very loose ideas of must-do trails, we had a plan formulating, little did we know at this point New Zealand would offer up some of the best tour guides who would be stoked to show us the golden trails.

Upon arrival and shortly after the family introductions, our number one priority was to get the bikes built and check they had made the long trip from back home in the UK safely. The next mission was to get settled into our accommodation for the next week, my sister's digs, better known as 'The Commune', which is a smallholding on the outskirts of Rotorua looking over the lake. It’s a hive of constant activity, but it's probably better known as ‘The Zerode Factory’. At the time, we were there tens of folk passed in and out sleeping in tents and vans on the land, or bunking up in one of the rooms. The garden was also full of fruit veg and edible weeds; a hippie paradise of you will.

We woke up fresh faced and keen to put tyres in the dirt and the first few days we were shown around the redwoods by Hollie and Rob. Rob Metz is a total Jedi on a bike and is also the brains behind Zerode bikes; we were all star struck, humbled and completely sold on the Pinion gearbox after experiencing the infamous 'Zerode Factory Tour'! Zerode is a small garden shed type brand whose roots developed in the downhill scene; Rob has since been developing the ultimate trail bike; watch this space.

With knowledge from the locals, we had soon touched all the trails in the Whakawarawara forest, some 300km of purpose-built mountain bike trails with an awesome shuttle service for those who are keen to pedal-dodge. The redwoods are littered with trails on the most amazing pumice style volcanic dirt. Just like the stones your mum rubs on her feet that always seem to be lying around the bathroom. The trails give you a new meaning of fast, hard-packed warp-factor trails with root gardens like you have never seen. There's loads of riding local to Rotorua, which we ticked off in the week, like Rainbow Mountain and the Skyline, we pretty much used what daylight we had for riding, but our key plan was to buy a van.

Jimmy was a wild card from the coast who spent his life ferrying school kids before he got his hands on us; we converted him into the perfect tour bus. Six people, six bikes, six big bags, tents and a poorly prepared kitchen; we were ready to rock! Jimmy's character made the trip in many ways for us, we got to see lots of the scenery, and we certainly became more comfortable with each other in close quarters. Hands down Jimmy's best feature had to be his single electric wing mirror, on top of that we had to be very gentle while driving him in second and third gear as he sounded a bit like he would take off at any moment. First stop with Jimmy was just south of Taupo where we bathed in hot pools and had our first night in the tent.  The next morning we reassessed the living situation and purchased some warmer sleeping bags before our ferry crossing from Wellington the capital of New Zealand to Picton.

Nelson was simply a new home from home. This place stole my heart and could have been the only destination of the trip had we not have been strict with ourselves. A week passed in no time at all filled with lung busting climbs and huge descents, and that was just from the campsite. We quickly realised that Nelson breeds beasts in every form, the riders are as strong and hardy as the trails are 'epic' in the truest sense of the word, hell, even the sand flies were savage! These beasts happened to include Ali Jameson, a good friend from home and owner of Trail Addiction and organiser of the Trans-Savoie.

He took the time out from his busy schedule and helped us to organise shuttles and gave us an insight to the unbelievable trails on his off-season doorstep. This riding community in Nelson was what made it for me, so many friends for life who were super keen to help out six unwashed and severely bitten outsiders. I think we surprised the locals with our thirst for riding, as we ticked off so much of it: Nydia Bay, Whakamarina, The Ramika Trail, Peaking Ridge, 629, Supplejack, Maitai Face.

To top it off, we even spent Christmas on the beach where we were lucky enough to meet Sven And Anka Martin on Christmas day. These guys don’t need an introduction, but I can't thank them enough for making our trip unforgettable and supplying the killer photos. Cheers! We had nailed New Zealand lifestyle in one fell swoop!

Surely every mountain bikers dream, and with a good reason for it. This was at the top of our lists, but it seemed like a lot of hassle with limited Internet, but that was, of course, proven completely wrong by New Zealand! One text in the pub and the promise of cash on arrival, we had a helicopter chartered for the following morning. Rocking up with a few of the keen locals to a deserted car park where minutes later swooped in a chopper, it has always been a dream to go in a helicopter, so I was brimming with excitement. The pilot made three trips to fit us all in, and I couldn’t believe how quickly we were sat at well over 1000m above sea level.

Crawling down The West Coast gave us a full dose of New Zealand's natural beauty with all the beautiful beaches, crazy rock formations and glaciers; this was where we really embraced 'freedom camping'. A Bivvy under the stars with steak, scrambled egg and noodles off the fire was a real highlight of the West Coast experience. New Zealand is perfect for camping; so long as you are self-contained (toilet on-board) you can pretty much pitch up where you please. If not then there are plenty of ‘DOC campsites’ (Department of Conservation) with necessary facilities that cost only a few dollars. We took a day’s travel to allow our bodies to recover from the battering they received in Nelson.

There was a lot of hype surrounding Queenstown; our first ride was evenings ride with the locals with a turnout of at least twenty-five riders, followed by a steak in the Atlas Bar, the local hub for mountain biking. These guys recently donated a sum of $21,000 to the local trail fund. The riding community in Queenstown is diverse, with pro downhillers seeking out winter sun and super enthusiastic locals.

We attempted to preserve our legs with few shuttle days courtesy of Vertigo Bikes in Queenstown; this was great for getting a high quantity of trails done in a short amount of time. The local gondola was closed to bikes for the Christmas period which we hadn't realised until we arrived which meant there was still plenty to pedal. The town was heaving for New Years; we had good intentions on a ‘big night out’ which turned into a few pineapple ciders in Atlas Bar and bed well before 1 am.

There was a storm brewing as we pointed Jimmy for Craigieburn, knowing we weren't prepared for a full on storm we made a b-line for Christchurch and took shelter for the night in a backpackers hostel. The hostel was in a recovering seaside village called New Brighton, which had been hit pretty hard by the earthquakes back in 2005.  A quiet evening entertaining a couple of Asian girls with my cooking skills and the use of a shower was welcomed with warm arms. The following morning we headed back to Craigieburn Forest Park and filled two days riding some amazing, and what felt like, hardly touched trails. Craigieburn is used for skiing in the winter so our first climb was a killer up to the ski fields, but we were soon rewarded with amazing views and epic traversing trails across scree on a steep hillside.

Whites Bay was our final stop on the South Island, after meeting so many folks over the last few weeks we organised a huge team of riders join us for our final ride. We used Whites Bay as our campsite for the last two nights; this was a DOC camp with showers, a total luxury! There were riders from all over the world whom we had met along our travels including Manon Carpenter and Jess Greaves, who had also been travelling around the islands in a van.  We set off from the top of the trail in order of our British Downhill Series race results from the 2015 season, this put me dead last as I haven't raced a bike since well, ever!

Inevitably it was time to head back north and start winding the trip down, we headed for Picton and jumped on the ferry, another three hours on the deck looking for dolphins, apparently if you are lucky you can often see whales and dolphins as you cross between the islands. They obviously didn’t want to see me, though. Back in Rotorua, the last week was over in a flash; we got to revisit some of our favourite trails from the area and spend a bit of time in front of the TV.

Our bikes were held together with cable ties and bandages. I got to spend some much needed time with my Mum and family before we left which was great as we don’t get to hang out very often. However, my Mum still won't let me come on her ladies Saturday morning ride. I am so fortunate to have family in New Zealand, without these guys I wouldn’t have been able to make this trip happen so I can't thank you enough Mum! Coming back from the trip like this always has a danger of giving you the holiday blues, but I always take it as a drive to get planning the next one.

I would like to dedicate this article to a fellow shredder and skid master Mark Dunlop, who sadly passed away shortly after us leaving, thanks for the skids bru. #skidsformark

Videos

Queenstown Shredit with George Brannigan
Bulldog and Blinky Ride Te Ranga | Downhill MTB
By Graham Beaumont
Graham Beaumont is a highly respected mountain bike coach, and has travelled the world riding his bike on the best trails the planet has to offer. His laid back attitude is in stark contrast to his hard riding style, and there are very few riders who have such exacting standards and demand so much from their bikes and kit.

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