It is being hailed as the hidden gem of New Zealand's great cycle tours, our very own echo of the Grand Canyon.
Riders from all over the world are expected to swoop on the Roxburgh Gorge Trail when it is built. But gloves, helmet and a sneaky bottle of pinot gris might not be the only accessories required.
A lifejacket could come in handy too.
Spanners have hit the spokes in drawn-out and sometimes fraught efforts to gain access through privately-owned and leased properties for the 34km trail from Alexandra to Roxburgh dam.
In a fresh twist, the trust behind the gorge trail is considering a cycling-boating combo to overcome its access headaches. Only 10km is being readied for construction. Trust chair Stephen Jeffery isn't fazed by literally watering down what has been accepted as one of the 18 "Great Rides" of the vaunted New Zealand Cycle Trail.
"The reality is it's going to be part of a far bigger experience. I couldn't imagine cyclists would be coming all the way to Alexandra just to ride that one trail," he says.
The 73km Clutha Gold Trail from Roxburgh dam to Lawrence appears to face fewer obstacles, but has devastated a group of Millers Flat homeowners whose gloriously tranquil river views are set to be interrupted by trickles of cycle traffic.
Mountain biking - be it hard-core hill climbs, single track bullet runs or a quiet amble along the Rail Trail - is just about a religion in Central Otago. Being seen to hinder ambitious cycleways that promise to pump up jobs and tourist dollars in depleted communities is close to heresy.
Both leaders of the Roxburgh Gorge and Clutha Gold trail trusts are unquestionably passionate about the multiple benefits they believe will flow through the region.
"When it all comes out in a year or two there will be a huge wave of community support," Clutha Gold chairman Rod Peirce predicts.
"It will certainly drive up property values and enhance business opportunities.
"All these [Millers Flat objectors] will make a packet. I won't."
Ruth and Colin Huwes don't give a toss about resale values. The retired schoolteachers have spent seven years building their dream guest retreat and retirement home on the banks of the Clutha River.
Public land known as marginal strip intersects their back lawn just a short distance from the house. The Clutha Gold route is earmarked to follow the strip through their property and seven others for a distance of 3.8km.
Marginal strip is designated to allow public assess to waterways, regardless of the feelings of adjacent property-owners. Both proposed cycle trails fall neatly into this category (marginal strip is also being used in parts of the Roxburgh Gorge).
"We were naive," Colin Huwes admits.
When Peirce first visited to fill them in on trail plans, the Huwes claim they asked him whether they should continue building the retreat or - if use of the marginal strip was a done deal - turn it into a backpackers' lodge.
Ruth Huwes: "He said 'keep building your retreat. You'll never see the cyclists'."
She said they were led to believe the trust was open to the idea of taking the trail down a road verge in front of their property.
Peirce admits saying there were other alternatives and they were explored, but says access and various other issues ruled them out. He denies leaving the Huwes with the wrong impression about the trust's preference to use river frontage.
"Philosophically we prefer the river because it creates a great branding tool: Follow the Clutha, New Zealand's longest river, for 50km.
"All we wish to do is share the marginal strip, which is for public use."
A question mark hangs over how seriously the road verge option was examined. Trust negotiator Mathew Sole spoke to Ruth Hawes' brother about the possibility of gaining access to his private land across the road - and was caught out on tape.
"I mean, quietly, we would prefer you to say no, you cannot have any access across our property, and then we can go down the marginal strip, but we have to genuinely look at it ..."
File notes by Sole describe it as a "flippant" and inappropriate remark for which he immediately apologised.
A lot of water has flowed down the Clutha since then but the anguish hasn't eased. Colin says the prospect of having their privacy and security breached is devastating. He sweeps an arm around the rimu interiors he lovingly prepared.
"It's wrecking our lives. Why would I do all this just for someone to come along and arbitrarily spoil it?"
The Humes are part of a group set up to lobby for an alternative route. It has had few legal shots to fire. Aside from the trust's ability to use the marginal strip (with consent from the Department of Conservation), the trail build itself did not require resource consent under the Central Otago District Council plan.
However the Beaumont to Lawrence leg of the Clutha Gold Trail will need consent from the Clutha District Council, which operates under different provisions.
An appeal by the group to the Environment Court against trail structures that did require consent is pending - but appears to be on shaky ground.
Peirce (73) a retired fruit and vegetable grower, is a former activist against dams on the Clutha. He knows what it is like to battle for a cause. He is also the founding fire chief of the Millers Flat Volunteer Brigade and is saddened by the rift with some in his old stamping ground.
"This trail, when built, still has to live with our neighbours. We're trying to steer a path without acrimony."
Too late, says Ruth. "The goodwill of the neighbours for this trail has been destroyed. We won't be waving to them [users] and that's the sad part of it."
When mates came from Britain to visit Kim and Phil Winterbottom at Roxburgh a while back, they joked about the wide and empty main street.
"They said it reminded them of the Wild West. They were almost expecting to see tumbleweed rolling through," Phil says, laughing.
It is not altogether funny. Fifteen years ago Roxburgh had two banks and a post office. Now it doesn't even have an ATM.
Talk to the Winterbottoms and they'll tell you the town needs these cycle trails - badly.
"Roxburgh's on its knees. Roxburgh needs something to fire it up," Phil says.
"It's a retirement place. Last one turns off the lights."
The couple own Lake Roxburgh Lodge, the only business in Lake Roxburgh village. It is 8km from the township and just a decent tee shot from the transition between the Roxburgh Gorge and Clutha Gold Trails.
"If we get the trails coming through this will be a different place in five years," Phil says.
The full Roxburgh Gorge ride would be "the jewel in the crown".
Two people are drinking in the Grand Tavern when we stop by mid-afternoon.
"It needs something to put a bomb up its backside," publican Garry Moore says.
"Most of the valley's feeling the pinch. The trails would be an advantage."
Local pharmacist Alastair Forbes rents out a few mountain bikes as a sideline. They're not suffering much wear and tear.
"You get to the point where you ask, what next? How do you grow your business?
"Everyone really wants it to go ahead. Everyone's really excited about it."
Up in Alexandra, mountain-bike tour guide Phil Oliver doesn't think the cycle-boat combo will discourage anyone.
"I think the clients will still roll with that."
The Roxburgh Gorge Trail Trust is hoping farmers will eventually "roll" with plans to cut a track through their land.
But any quick fix for completing the 34km ride presently looks out of reach.
Last month the Miller family, which has farmed The Herrons at Shingle Creek for four generations, broke off negotiations with the group responsible for driving the $3.5 million project.
"We have been reluctant participants throughout," the Millers wrote to the Roxburgh Gorge Trail Trust. "We have found the process to be intrusive and frustrating."
Two other high country stations through which the trust wants to take the trail are now shaping to use it as a bargaining chip in tenure review talks with the Commissioner of Crown Lands.
But that could take years - and the trust is racing to meet an August 2012 deadline to snap up $2 million the Government has pledged for the track build.
James Russell, of Gorge Creek Station, says the proposed trail would adversely affect a 1000-acre merino block. The breed is notoriously flighty and would not graze on the lower reaches if cyclists and walkers passed by. Stock would be cut off from drinking water in the river and creek, vital sources as a rock shelf means no groundwater is available.
He also relies on the sheltered block as a strategic haven after shearing and storms.
"I support the [trail] initiative," Russell says. "I think it's a good thing for the community at both ends.
"I'll make it quite plain. At no point in time throughout [negotiations with the trust] have I asked for cash compensation.
"I'm just not in a position to donate a thousand acres to the community."
Russell is on the brink of a tenure review involving land issues quite separate from the cycle trail. He sees a great opportunity for a "win-win".
The Commissioner of Crown Lands is charged with overseeing tenure reviews free of political influence. Russell believes the cycle trails are an exceptional case - one that merits the Government weighing in as it did to clinch the filming of The Hobbit with Warner Brothers.
"This is an opportunity to actually see some dollars spent in towns like Roxburgh and Alexandra, which are really struggling," Russell says. "The politicians won't get off their hands and make it happen.
"Is John Key prepared to make an effort larger than a soundbite?
"There's a real synergy to be had if the political will is there to make it happen."
A similar situation applies for Allistair Campbell, who runs Obelisk Station and is already in tenure review.
"I'm not opposed to the idea [of the trail]," he says.
The tough nut to crack in terms of a complete trail build is the 2.6km section earmarked across the Millers' property. Resorting to marginal strip is expected to present daunting and possibly insurmountable technical challenges - although skirting the river edge with some sort of clipped-on structure may be possible.
Jack Miller says that idea is "hare-brained" and makes clear he will be an even tougher nut to crack.
Though initially open to the trail idea, Miller now says he has had a "gutsful" of dealing with the RGT Trust. Like his neighbours, he did not want cash payment and had explored a possible land title exchange to offset what he says would be major upheaval to his farming routines.
He says the trail as it was planned is forced to leave the river edge because of his terrain and would go into his paddocks by 50 to 100m - costing him grazing and water access.
Any prospect of him gifting an easement was ridiculous, he says.
"In real world times, you don't give something away for nothing. They're just living in dreamland. I dont have 'idiot' tattooed on my head."
Trust chair Stephen Jeffery responds: "We never said that there wouldn't be some payback somewhere".
The problem is that most of the trust's money is tagged for construction.
"It's far easier for us, financially and to justify what were doing, to go through the tenure review process over this land and [put] some value over the strip that we and the public wish to traverse."
However, the trust appears to face a huge hurdle in the form of Commissioner of Crown Lands David Gullen. He administers the pastoral leases in question and says the rules he operates under dictate that affected farmers must be paid compensation.
Says Jeffery: "We have no money to do that deal".
Doing an Oliver Twist, having already been promised $2 million of taxpayers' money, is more than likely too tough a gear to push. In the wake of the Christchurch quakes, Finance Minister Bill English is entitled to file any requests for extra cycle trail funds under "nice to have".
Jeffery believes there is precedent for a future credit, or offset, to be lodged should the farmers enter tenure review (Campbell already has; Russell is expected to shortly).
Gullen appeared to rule this out in a written response to the Otago Daily Times.
"The 'objects' of tenure review, the statutory process, and the outcomes that the process may deliver (and these outcomes may not be predetermined) are not intended or tailored to the treatment of an outcome sought by a third party, the cycleway trust, in this case."
The law decrees that the Commissioner is above political influence.
That didn't stop Jeffery writing to the Prime Minister last October commending a "let's fix this" approach to the lessees and landowners.
Gullen was "grumpy" about the attempted end run, according to several sources. It came on top of him learning about months of negotiations between the trust and the farmers of which he had not been made aware.
Asked for his views on the Jeffery letter, Gullen was circumspect.
"It is not appropriate as an independent commissioner for me to comment on the Trust's representations to the Prime Minister."
CODC Business Development manager Jonathan Gadd, who did the feasibility study for the Roxburgh Gorge Trail, last year stated it was a "go or no go" proposition and going only part way was not an option.
Like the trust, he has had to cut his cloth anew and - as an informal adviser - make the best of a series of increasingly enmeshed challenges.
"You almost need the wisdom of Solomon to resolve all this."
All this is unfolding as the clock ticks down on the governments $2 million contribution to the Roxburgh Gorge Trail. Indications are there is room for patience and flexibility, and Jeffery is ever-hopeful.
"We have been roadblocked. Yeah, we have ... but I'm not going to give up. I'm optimistic that at some point there'll be a trail that goes the whole distance."
TIMELINE:
ROXBURGH GORGE TRAIL
2006
• June: Concept floated at Roxburgh and Teviot Valley community plan meeting.
• September: Alexandra community plan group independently discusses trail idea.
2008
• December: Exploratory study identifies the true left (eastern) side of the Clutha River between Alexandra and Roxburgh dam as "a more outstanding visitor experience".
2009
Negotiations with farmers stall, ruling out the preferred true left option. Assessment continues on the western (highway) side down the true right of the Clutha River.
• February: At a major job summit, Prime Minister John Key proposes a national cycle trail.
• May: Ministry of Tourism allocates $50 million to develop a series of cycle trails; some stand-alone, others to be linked.
2010
• February: Roxburgh Gorge Trail (RGT) chosen by the Government's New Zealand Cycle Trail (NZCT) project as one of 13 to be assessed for funding.
• May: A business and feasibility study predicts that opening up "our own 'Grand Canyon"' will, within five years, add 26 full-time jobs and $1.2 million to the local economy.
- Efforts made to secure access agreements with landowners and lessees. Widespread support tempered by call for farming disruptions to be recognised by transferring farmers' Crown-owned leasehold land to freehold, or some other trade-off. It is understood no farmers expect cash compensation.
- Trust has just $80,000 for landowner negotiations and other expenses, later helped by a $130,000 grant from Central Lakes Trust.
• September: NZCT approves $3.5 million trail build and soon after confirms a $2 million contribution to construction. Target date for completion is August 2012.
• October: RGT Trust chairman Stephen Jeffery encourages prime minister to support a "let's fix this" approach to farmers wanting their leasehold land to be made freehold in exchange for providing trail access.
- Trust told any access easements must go through the Commissioner of Crown Lands.
• November: Commissioner of Crown Lands David Gullen tells Roxburgh Gorge farmers that easements through pastoral lease land by law require careful vetting, his authorisation, and, if approved, financial compensation for the leaseholder. Finding this money would fall to the trust.
• December: RGT Trust formally registers as a charitable trust to plan, finance and build the trail.
2011
• May: Bruce and Leigh Johnston, who own property at the Alexandra end of the trail, publicly declare opposition based on environmental, safety and financial concerns and refuse to grant access. Trust forced to plot a new route for first 10km over Crown and private land.
• June: Roxburgh Gorge farmer Jack Miller and his family - among those seeking a freehold exchange of leasehold land - tire of "intrusive and frustrating" dealings with trust and break off contact, saying they will not allow the trail through their property.
- Using public land known as marginal strip through the 2.6km Miller section involves daunting and possibly insurmountable construction challenges yet to be fully investigated.
• July: RGT Trust appoints four new trustees and boldly announces its intention to complete the full 34km trail - using "innovative" options if required.
TIMELINE:
CLUTHA GOLD TRAIL
2006
• March: Central Otago District councillor Graham Dillon hears a whisper that interest is being shown in developing the old railway line from Roxburgh to Milton as a cycle trail. He discusses the idea with Rod Peirce, who two months on submits it to Roxburgh and Teviot Valley community plan meeting.
• November: Working party formed.
2008
• January: 73km Roxburgh Dam to Lawrence trail to cost $5.5 million, according to feasibility study (includes $1m contingency). Operational costs between $320,000 and $550,000 each year.
2009
• January: Clutha Gold Trail Charitable Trust registered to plan, finance, build, operate and maintain trail - and to assist similar groups at either end.
2010
• February: Clutha Gold Trail chosen by the Government's New Zealand Cycle Trail project as one of 13 to be assessed for funding.
• September: NZCT approves $5.5 million trail build and confirms $2.55 million contribution to build first stage from Roxburgh dam to Beaumont.
2011
• February: 19 of 27 submissions to resource consent hearing on structures oppose trail. Most object to proposed route cutting through river views of adjacent properties. Trail build needs no resource consent - permitted activity in CODC district plan.
• May: NZCT confirms $1.25 million contribution to build second stage from Beaumont to Lawrence. Trail build requires resource consent from Clutha District Council.
• July: Environment Court appeal by the Society for the Promotion of an Alternative Route pending.
2012
• September: Target set by NZCT for completion.
