After my luxurious night I awoke and had a breakfast consisting of 0.5l of yoghurt with a few handfuls of toasted muesli. I'll have to remember this when I camp near stores as this was awesome for a change. As soon as I started I knew the start was going to be quick. I actually had to check my panniers were still on! The first I managed 47km in the first 2 hours. Unfortunately in that time I passed straight through the last town with any decent shop.
This became a problem as I was very short on sun cream and as I found out the last 2 dairies didn't have any! Thankfully I had enough to get me to camp and the next morning I got some from some other campers.
After another hour or so I stopped for lunch at Te Kao. I met 2 cyclists from the uk who'd just started from the Cape that morning and were heading to Bluff, in just 6 weeks! All I could do was wish them luck as they would need to do a lot of hard riding.
After lunch I pushed on. The day got a lot harder with hills that just kept getting bigger making the going tough. I didn't think there was going to be quite this much climbing in the day but when I got to the end it was worth it.
I had a quick ride down (and a considerably harder climb up) to the lighthouse but that was enough exploring for me! I'd definitely want to spend more time exploring the walking tracks if I wasn't tired and had my bike to worry about. Just looking how far down the water is was tiring enough!
After my quick look I headed back a few kms to the turn off for Tapotupotu Bay, just a 2.5km gravel road that plummeted rapidly down to sea level. Down the bottom I was greeted with a beautiful beach and heaps of space to camp. Seemed this is quite a popular site, although the site could gps triple and still have space.
After a quick swim and a very quick cold shower I got my camp sorted and pulled out the stove. This is the first time I've needed it so far so I'm considering sending it home and buying a very basic stove, just enough to meet my normal needs.
As the sun set the stars came out and with no light pollution and only a few clouds or made for great viewing.
After the longest day by distance so far the tent was very welcoming.
Distance day 117km total 532km
Ascent day 1300m total 6450m
After my big day before I'd planned to make the return trip a bit easier. Unfortunately my need to reach a store meant it was still a monster of a day!
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| Halfway Up the cliff |
My warmup was 165m of vertical distance in 2.5km back up the gravel road. After that my first stop was to check out the giant sand dunes of Te Paki. When I got there I decided to give riding 90mile beach a go. To get to the beach you have to take a trip through the stream bed for 3km. I didn't get very far as I was sinking in far too much and my bike wasn't sounding too good. It's unfortunate as apparently if I could just stick through till the beach it'd have got much easier. Maybe another time on someone else's mountain bike :p.
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| Creek from the top. Sections out of the water were fine |
While the lack of hills I remembered I definitely didn't have a headwind on the way up! After quite a long time I arrived in Pukenui and finally bought some sun cream.
Distance day 82km total 614km
Ascent day 1150 total 7600m
The night before and still this morning my calves really hurt, probably to do with the climbing the sand dunes as well as the excessive riding. Some stretches helped a bit but it was still slightly uncomfortable to ride. As I'd done a lot the last 2 days I took it easy. This time it actually was fairly easy with only a few step hills not amounting to much. I had a tail wind for a lot of the day as well which helped immensely.
Turned up at the campsite and it was completely deserted. Not even someone to take my money! They'll be around in the morning most likely.
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| My company for the afternoon. |
Distance day 76km total 690km
Ascent day 600m total 8200m
I'll be off towards the Bay of Islands tomorrow where I may have a day with almost no cycling, but we'll see.
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