From Cape Reinga to Bluff! - CELIA'S top-to-tail RIDE

THE EX-MAYOR HAS A NEW CHALLENGE TO TICK OFF

- Julie Jacobson

Butt butter, one change of clothes, and a bunk; former Wellington mayor Celia Wade-Brown doesn’t do overindulgence. Well, not on this particular journey. And what a trek it is – 3000km by bike, from the top of New Zealand to the very bottom.

The 63-year-old, who, in 2010 famously cycled to Wellington Airport to meet then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is riding in this year’s Tour Aotearoa long-distance “brevet” from Cape Reinga to Bluff. Participants follow a route that takes in NZ’s most iconic cycle trails, travelling at their own pace but within a specified 10 to 30-day time limit.

The former green mayor’s hoping to do it in “29 and-ahalf days”, explaining, “At the moment the aim is just to do it, unless I have a mechanical or body problem, but if I’ve got most of the way and it’s going to take me 40 days, then I’ll just take some extra days.”

She has some idea of what she’s in for. She and husband Alastair Nicholson, who now live in the Mangatarere Valley in the Wairarapa, walked the Te Araroa Trail in 2017, a year after she stood down as mayor. It was, Celia says, her “political detox” rather than something to tick off a bucket list.