John Flatt
Getting there...
- Location
- New Zealand
Here in New Zealand, SH 35 around the east cape of the north island is rather famous and on a lot of 'bucket lists'. It's isolated, historic and very unique. I'm blessed, it being my local. The roads in Tairawhiti (east coast) have taken a real hammering over the last few years due to a number of severe weather events. Also forestry is a huge industry here and that has a number of adverse environmental effects. One of these is road damage from hundreds of 52 ton log trucks on roads never designed to carry such weights. The trucks transport logs from the harvest areas to Eastland Port in Gisborne. When planning a ride local knowledge is helpful to select a route that does not have a lot of repairs in progress, which overall is pretty constant. Central Govt has put millions of $s into 'TREC' (transport rebuild east coast). Here is a recent photo of my 650 'cafe racer' taken outside an old long closed derelict bank building at Tokomaru Bay, SH 35.

