TT2000 2025 or “Holes, the avoidance of”

There are times when I really wonder if there’s a little bit of my brain dedicated to self-sabotage, and gazing at the backend of my Spyder sticking out of a ditch was one of those times. It had all started so well. The subject of this year’s checkpoints was community halls, something that there’s an abundance of dotted across South Island New Zealand. Even better, there was a ‘Hall Hunter’ option where you could visit any halls you liked, they just needed to have a sign with the place name and be “open”. The definition of open was a little vague, but I decided if I could find phone number to book them then that would do. The start point is Greymouth and the finish is Milton but otherwise we can wander where we like. This was going to be my tenth TT2000, so I decided that my real self-set challenge was to include some places and roads I’d not been before. It didn’t take long to plan a suitable route with 60 halls that totalled just above the minimum 2000kms...