Art dodger's downhill ride

Nelson has a good selection of antique and secondhand shops.

A late summer's morning in the Maitai Valley on Nelson's southeastern side. The sun is already high above the ridge. The pine-clad hillsides are steaming with the humid fragrance of conifer and clay. The cicadas are in deafening chorus.

And just to my left the native golf balls are in full flight down the valley floor at the Waahi Taakaro Golf Course.One ball has just whizzed past to land in the next paddock a few metres away.

It inspires the thought to speed up before less accurate playing partners arrive. "Aucklander knocked off bike near 15th fairway" isn't a local headline I want to help write. .

But there's only so much acceleration on offer. This is a Sunday morning ride on a rented two-wheeler. It's started out gently uphill, but it's also my first time riding a dual suspension mountain bike which is much flasher than the partly hydraulic "hardtail" I left at home.

But all that extra spring is designed for going down hills, not up them. Working against the slope feels like jumping a pogo-stick upstairs. Soon, the insect white noise is drowned out by the sound of hard puff. It's on up to the Tantragee Saddle, only 180m above and 3km from downtown Nelson, but I'm already feeling like oxygen might be required.

My sights are set on the track of the old Dun Mountain Railway, a track which follows the path of New Zealand's first train line to the old copper and chromium mine which ran up here in the mid 19th century. It's part of the mineral belt in the hills behind the city. A few horizontal kilometres and a few hundred vertical metres later, the temperature has dropped and my breath is steaming underneath the damp forest canopy.

But any sense of wilderness achievement is soon undermined when I round a bend to find a park bench put there by the Nelson City Council for any of its hard-thighed citizens who fancy a scenic break on their constitutionals.

I have maps of the many tracks around the hills which have made Nelson something of a mountain biking mecca. But really, I should have brought the Navigator. Instead, she's opted for a wander through the Nelson Provincial Museum ["brilliant" ] before meeting up for lunch. We had gone to Nelson with a plan: Ride bike. Eat well. Buy junk. And if possible, avoid the art.

Yes, yes, we should embrace the art of an area to get the soul of a place. But there's just so much of it around here. They ran out of places to stick it on the walls, so they started wearing it. Now that's a gallery in itself. You walk around a corner and there's someone blowing glass in a front room. Every second painting on the walls of every second eatery has a price tag. It's daunting.

Too much of it, of course, is high-class hippie tourist tat. But to get interested in the better art of the Nelson region, you'll need rather more time than a weekend - and a large and extremely disposable income.

There is much of that tat at the Nelson Saturday Market, our first excursion after checking into our very nice room at the vastly-more-stylish-than-it-sounds Trailways Motor Inn, on the banks of the Maitai river just south of Nelson's CBD.

The weekly market, in a rugby field-sized carpark in the middle of town, is a giant bazaar of food, woodwork and jewellery - it seems a fair bit of whatever copper is left up in the Mineral Belt has been recycled to become buckles and wrist bands and other really useful copper-coloured things.

Of course, the rings for the Lord of the Rings films came from the local jewellery family, the Hansens. By the looks of the market, you could interior decorate and outfit your very own Hobbiton with its many woody wares. But we weren't after tourist tat but old tat, which is always more fun.

Nelson has a fine range of secondhand shops, some of which we had discovered on a previous visit, some of which we found on the Nelson Antique Trail leaflet. Three of the best shops sit next to each other at the beginning of Waimea Rd just southwest of the CBD.

In one I ended up paying roughly 2000 per cent more for a Star Trek torch raygun than the original 1970s price tag. It's a fine addition to the raygun collection at home (more than three is a collection, isn't it?).

Down the road at another fine establishment, another score for $30 - a 1960s vinyl-covered hard case for LPs, just perfect for those resthome DJ residencies.

We had shopped well. Eventually, it was time to to eat well, too.

Unable to get a reservation at the allegedly iconic Nelson eatery, The Boat Shed Cafe, we wandered down the cafe and bar-festooned Hardy St.

First stop was the intimate Nelson Oyster Bar for a drink and perhaps a local shellfish or six. Except, sorry, no oysters tonight due to seasonal fluctuations or something.

Still, the sushi entree prepared by fleet-fingered chef Michael quickly made up for the lack of bivalve.

With too many Indian, Thai, and Chinese places to choose from, we opted for a geographical compromise - Malaysian, at the friendly, unfussy and reasonably priced Spices, also in Hardy St.

The next day, having worked off the carbo-loading of the previous night, lunch was out at the Waimea Estate, one of many local vineyards with fine nosh on offer.

Though the best meal of the weekend was the following night at the aforementioned Boat Shed. Its prices might make one pine for home, but it's a restaurant which happily defies the usual great-view-bad-food rule.

Sitting out on its deck above the water after the meal, parts of me still ached from the biking earlier that day.

Well not so much the biking, but the final descent which didn't involve much bike at all ...

In my efforts to get as far up the Dun Mountain Railway track as possible before turning back to town, I am soon running out of time.

Turning back down the hill, I spot a short-cut on the map - a firebreak straight down the hill marked in black as "extremely difficult".

Down I go, bouncing like someone about to discover what "extremely difficult" or indeed "broken collar bone" actually means, until ... well the firebreak is no more.

I stop. Either I've misread the map, or taken a wrong turn. But now I'm stuck in bush and facing another headline "Navigationally challenged Aucklander found lost in bush 3km from city".

The only way to go is down. I can't be bothered carrying the bike all the way back up.

Some minutes, too many gorse bushes and a few bike-tosses-over-fences later, I am in someone's back paddock.

I prepare an "aw shucks, dumb Jafa, sorry for trespassing" speech for the farmer as I knock on the farmhouse front door.

But thankfully no one is home. And this isn't only a farm and a way out to town. It's also the studio of a prominent local painter.

You can't avoid the art stuff in Nelson. Even when you're lost in them thar hills.


Checklist

NELSON

Getting There

For details of Air NZ's direct flights to Nelson see link below.

Activities

Bike hire - Stewarts Cycle City, (03) 548 1666

Accommodation

Trailways Motor Inn, (03) 548 7049

Eating

Waimea Estate, Appelby Highway, Hope, (03) 544 4963

Nelson Oyster Bar, 115 Hardy St, (03) 545 8955

Spices (Malaysian), 227-229 Hardy St, (03) 539 4917

The Boat Shed Cafe, 350 Wakefield Quay, (03) 546 9783

Antique/Secondhand Shops

Tula & Niles (for vintage clothing), 28 Nile St

Style Junkies, 2 Waimea Rd

Jimpy's Antiques, 4 Waimea Rd

Vintage Antiques and Collectables, 50 Vanguard St

Soucheby's Antiques, 75 Gladstone Rd, Richmond

* Russell Baillie flew to Nelson courtesy of Air New Zealand and was hosted by Lattitude Nelson