Best Cycling Routes in New Zealand

1 Otago Central Rail Trail

152 km · 1–5 days · Easiest · Otago

The one that started it all: the Cycle Trail describes it as the trail that inspired the creation of the whole Ngā Haerenga network. It follows the old railway line between Clyde and Middlemarch through country that looks like nowhere else here — brown tussock and schist, railway bridges and tunnels, abandoned gold diggings, and a string of towns whose art deco municipal buildings are a reminder that the line once mattered.

It is the trail we would put a nervous rider on, because a railway gradient is a railway gradient and nothing on it requires skill. It is also the most complete of the Great Rides as a holiday: accommodation, shuttles, luggage transfers and country cafes along its whole length, and towns that have organised themselves around cyclists rather than merely tolerating them.

The classic version is several days end to end, but it breaks cleanly into shorter rides — which is the reason it suits a family or a mixed-ability group better than anything else on this list.

2 Alps 2 Ocean

315 km · 1–7 days · Intermediate · Mackenzie, Waitaki and North Otago

The longest Great Ride, and the one that behaves most like a journey. It begins at White Horse Hill Campground, two kilometres north of Aoraki / Mount Cook Village, and ends at the Pacific in Ōamaru. In between are braided rivers in glacier-carved valleys, turquoise hydro-lakes set in golden tussock, hydro dams, limestone shapes including Elephant Rocks, and the night sky over Tekapo, which is as dark as any you will stand under.

It is divided into nine sections, and the Cycle Trail reckons the whole thing is pleasurable in five to seven days. Intermediate is the right grade and worth respecting: the country is open, the nor’wester has nothing to slow it, and the gaps between services are the longest of any trail here. Riding it in four is possible and is a different kind of holiday.

3 Timber Trail

85 km · 2 days · Intermediate · Central North Island

The North Island’s best two-day ride, through Pureora Forest Park — a mix of exotic, regenerating and virgin forest that exists because environmentalists fought for it in the 1970s. The trail follows old logging roads and tramlines, linked by purpose-built singletrack and a series of suspension bridges long enough and high enough that you will notice crossing them.

It runs between the small settlements of Pureora and Ongarue, with smaller Piropiro at about the halfway mark. Limited road access, real remoteness and the accommodation in the middle are why the Cycle Trail recommends two days starting in the north at Pureora, and that constraint is what turns a long ride into a proper trip.

4 Pou Herenga Tai – Twin Coast Cycle Trail

87 km · 2 days · Easiest · Northland

The only Great Ride that crosses the country, from the Bay of Islands in the east to the Hokianga Harbour in the west, on a mixture of smooth rail trail, cycle path, wetland boardwalk, suspension bridges and country road. It can be ridden in either direction or broken into day trips, and it passes through towns the Cycle Trail describes, accurately, as rich in manaakitanga.

Its real distinction is at the western end, near Māngungu Mission, where on 12 February 1840 the largest single signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi took place — one of the most consequential places in the country and one of the least visited. Arriving there slowly, on a route whose own name is about binding the coasts together, is not a bad way to meet it.

Note before you plan a direction: a five-kilometre section between Kawakawa and Ōpua is reachable only by a train connection. Check the timetable before you set a start point.

5 West Coast Wilderness Trail

133 km · 4–5 days · Easy · West Coast

From Greymouth’s historic port to the old gold town of Ross, retracing packhorse tracks and tramlines through rainforest, past pristine rivers and quiet lakes and out onto rugged beaches, with the snow on the Southern Alps standing behind the whole thing. The Cycle Trail rates winter a particularly good time to ride it, which tells you something about how the light works here.

Graded Easy over four or five days, it is the most relaxed way to see the least relaxed landscape in the country — and, like the best trails here, it is a piece of industrial archaeology you happen to be riding along, carrying stories of pounamu and of the gold rush in equal measure. It rains. Plan for it rather than around it.

Trail alert, current on 4 September 2026: Totara Bridge is closed because of its structural condition. You can ride to it from either side but not across it, and the district council says alternatives are being explored. Check the trail’s own alerts before you go.

6 Queenstown Trail

138 km · 1–4 days · Easy · Otago

Not one route but a web of them threading the Wakatipu Basin on lakeside paths, country lanes, quiet roads and cross-country cycleway, linking Queenstown, Arrowtown and the Gibbston Valley. That makes it the least trail-like of the Great Rides and the most useful, because it is designed to work as an afternoon or as four days and does not much care which you choose.

It is the obvious answer for anyone already in Queenstown who wants a day on a bike rather than a holiday on one. Bike hire, shuttles and guided tours are everywhere, early settler and gold-mining history is scattered along it, and the Gibbston section between the vineyards is what a good many people mean when they say they cycled in New Zealand.

7 The Old Ghost Road

85 km · 2–4 days · Advanced · West Coast

A resurrected gold miners’ route between the ghost town of Lyell and sleepy Seddonville, and the wildest thing on the network: sheer-sided valleys strewn with earthquake debris, alpine tarns, waterfalls, and long views from rocky tops. The riding is mostly purpose-built track and ranges, in the Cycle Trail’s own words, from fast and flowing to tight and technical.

This is a genuine Advanced trail with short expert-graded sections, and it is the only ride on this page where getting it wrong has consequences. Staying overnight is a large part of the point — the huts and tent sites are the reason people come back — and it is also the constraint, because there is no road access through the middle.

Huts must be booked and go early. This one needs planning rather than enthusiasm, and it is not the trail to find out how you feel about exposure.

8 Tour Aotearoa

3,000 km · several weeks · mixed grades · Cape Reinga to Bluff

Not a Great Ride, and that is the point. Tour Aotearoa is a 3,000-kilometre bikepacking route the length of the country, devised by the guidebook writer Jonathan Kennett, which strings together the best of the Great Rides and Heartland Rides with the most enjoyable back roads available between them. It is the answer to the question this page keeps deflecting — can you ride New Zealand end to end? — and the answer is yes, if you accept somebody else’s route.

It can be ridden independently at any time. There is also a brevet each February, with the 2027 event starting on 17 and 18 February. Either way this is a serious undertaking and belongs in a different category from the other seven here.