Big Red Bike Tour Stage 5: Beating Around The Bush

1 September 2025

Considering the Big Red is made to go pretty much anywhere, I shouldn’t have been beating around the bush about going off road. But I have: until today, when we hit the dirt.

I can’t go far from home as I need to look after Dino the rosy faced lovebird.

But that was fine as my regular route along the Tama River also has many off-road tracks.

I can’t say the idea of rough riding is enticing, but I figured I’d give it a try today.

I almost immediately regretted it, though, as just minutes into hitting the dirt track, I looked down to my computer device only to discover that my Wahoo was gone.

I retraced my ride back through the few hundred meters of scrub that I had traversed. Nothing. I got off the Big Red and walked slowly back to where I noticed the device was gone. I was almost at that point and had found nothing. As a last resort, I opened the app on my phone and hoped I’d be able to track the device. At first, it didn’t pair, which came as a bit of a blow, but then I noticed the phone app had connected, which meant the device was within a range of about 10 meters. And that, to my great relief, proved to be precisely the case.

Faffing around trying to find the lost Wahoo ate heavily into my riding time.

I had promised to be home in time for lunch, but enjoyed messing around in the bushland, which was much thicker than I had expected.

Scrub often led to an open space, or down to the water’s edge.

I’d known there was a network of tracks near the Tama and Asa rivers, but never really taken them either on foot or by bike.

The novelty provided an unexpected adventure.

I managed to get entangled on a spider’s web along one trap and the thread stayed stuck to my glasses for the rest of the day.

The forest was very deep and I’d tried a few tracks that all just suddenly stopped.

Eventually, I got off the bike and pushed it to the edge of the woods to the embankment forming the cycling path base.

By concidence, there were guys mowing the lawns along the track.

They got a good laugh seeing me and Big Red emerge out of the deep forest and struggle up the steep and slippery embankment, where freshly cut grass was making footing even more precarious.