The Christchurch Gondola provided me with a bargaining chip to get Squiffy up a mountain. There’s no way Miss Lazylegs would walk up after what the High Atlas range in Morocco did to her. Knowing my new found romance with bikes, she agreed that we would hire mountain bikes at the top and ride them down to the base station. We shunned the rugged mountain terrain for the more scenic road route. After all it’d be all downhill, wouldn’t it?

No. Unbeknown to both of us, the first 150 metres of the route was in fact uphill. Hardly Tour Down Under steep, but steep enough for us to feel like somebody had set fire to our lungs. Claire lasted all of about twenty metres. I lasted rather longer, only disembarking the vessel in a Bridget-Jones-falls-off-exercise-bike style some twenty metres from the summit. After exchanging our various “I think I’m going to die” sensations with each other and sucking in the views (read: waiting for our breath to return), we began our descent.

The scenery here is magnificent and we took our time sweeping our way down the mountain and along the beach roads back towards the base. I thought the bikes were brilliant, really great quality. Just don’t ask Squiffy: her botty was saw for days,

If you’re riding the Gondola, I heartily recommend biking down the road and making an afternoon of it — even if you have to push the bikes for the first and last uphill bits (like we did). Just don’t make the mistake of turning off to return to the Gondola base too soon, only realising the mistake after pushing the bikes up a very steep road (also, like we did).

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