Paintons General Store - Wakefield Cycle Hire

With historic Wakefield now featuring on the Great Taste Cycle Trail an Heritage building, once a general store, has been put to good use serving as a bike hire facility. Corey Kelly is the proprietor.

In between times, the building has had an interesting career, serving as possibly one of New Zealand's first chiropractic clinics. American-trained Dr Wratt practiced here from 1945 to 1965, after emigrating from Iowa in the 1920s. After his retirement the store served a number of other purposes, until it came into the chiropractic trade again, in 2009. Corrian and Daphna Poelsma, from Richmond, moved their young family here to rekindle the chiropractic clinic, and make use of the enormous back shed for their Saab car collection.

The store's latest incarnation, as a bike hire shop, is in response to the rise in cycle tourism, especially Wakefields' proximity to Spooner's Tunnel and Tasman's Great Taste Trail. They even have electric bikes. Many of the building's historic features are intact and on display for visitors.