Tony Hutcheson

Tony Hutcheson returns to his home town of Tāmaki Makaurau twice in one year with bike and mates in tow, devising an eclectic urban tour linking up cycle paths, obscure lanes and byways with taverns and pastries.

Tony Hutcheson’s troublesome illegitimate Beervet returns to Central Otago with the usual antics and protagnists enjoying mixed weather, new-ish terrain and splendid southern hospitality.

Tony Hutcheson escapes winter on a family excursion to Samoa with bikes, snorkels and masks.

The covid-interrupted 3rd edition of the Kiwi Beervet was at short notice relocated from Coromandel to Tasman/Golden Bay. Replete with gravel hyperbole and country pub libations, Tony Hutcheson tells it like it (almost) was.

Fifteen blokes on tour; varying interpretations of gravel-appropriate bikes; endless ruminations on tyre width; progress measured in pubs and pints; and cols marked with a wee dram. What could possibly go wrong?

During an idle Wednesday night, whisky in hand, a plan was hatched to hold a non-event cycle tour. Invite no one, don’t race but don’t take it easy and above all else, stop for beer.

According to family folklore, my Great Grandfather was New Zealand’s honorary Swiss Consul between 1926 and 1933. Perhaps it is therefore genetics that keep drawing me back to the Confoederatio Helvetica, although it’s more probably that my wife and half of my daughter are Swiss and we have family to visit.

Tony Hutcheson and his venerable Olympus recently banked an indulgent four weeks of European singletrack. Mid trip, he and Malcolm Stoney hooked up with Jamie Nicoll and Max Schumann for a week of gnarl, gnocchi and grappa in Val Gardena.