Detours

Author-s bicycle journey through small-town New Zealand, revisited 'a generation on' , with postscript on cycling in Antarctica.

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Summer, 1981. A youngish Neville Peat set out from Cape Reinga on his imported 10-speed bike 'Blue', aiming to cycle through small-town New Zealand from north to south, all the way to Stewart Island. The week before Easter, he reached his destination. He wrote a book about it, Detours: A journey through small-town New Zealand , which sold lots of copies and was broadcast on radio. Many times in the intervening years, usually on anniversaries of the journey -- ten years, fifteen years, twenty years -- he wished to try a repeat journey, but life held other challenges. Now, as a leading author and in the age of the personal computer and cell phone, a very different world, he has revisited many of the towns and regions, not on a bicycle, but by car. In Detours -- A generation on , he reflects once again on how small-town New Zealand is doing.