Cycling is a convenient, fun, affordable and healthy way to travel around Dunedin

On your bike, cher.

“Cycling is a convenient, fun, affordable and healthy way to travel around Dunedin, whether to get you to work or school, for recreation, or to experience Dunedin’s scenery.”

Dunedin City Council website.

Oh if only it was so. It is true of the first cycle path to be built in modern times in Otago (of which Dunedin is the main city) but this is a tourist oriented cycle trail from Middlemarch to Clyde, through Central Otago, a distance of about 150 kilometres (the Central Otago Rail Trail) and it starts about 80km away from Dunedin. It was built on the carcass of the railway that had been there from as early as 1877 until 1990 when it was pulled up by the neo-liberal government of the time (there were several) who had taken this toxic ideology very much to heart. So there is some regret involved. Today you can only see the former history …