Words & photos: Nick Edards, Sarah Newman
Nick Edards and Sarah Newman hired
a Triumph Street III to explore the
twist and turns of New Caledonia.
M
ost of us have rides that stick in
our minds for whatever reason,
sometimes good, sometimes not
so good. The most recent hall of
fame inductee for me is an hour
of wonderfully unhinged action
on a Street Triple R through an
abandoned nickel mine in the
middle of New Caledonia. Intense
doesn’t come close to describing it. The road
surface for the most part was excellent although
some of the corners were a little chewed up by years
of ore trucks, there was virtually no other traffic and
the weather was fine, warm and welcoming. There
was a ditch on each side of the road, the one on
the left was about a metre wide and maybe 20cm
deep. The one on the right was about 1km wide
and 500m deep with no protection to save the day
if you got things wrong. For sure there was a little
earth berm between the tarmac and a long drop
but it was only there to mark the edge of the drop
off, not to stop prevent inadvertent hang gliding
activities. The Street Triple, a renter from the ever
cheerful and helpful Bernard at Nouméa Rider, was
the perfect tool for the job; light, flickable, a great
torque curve and brakes that did exactly what was