Another big day today, and one not without difficulties. The wind was in my face for the majority of the day and had I not had my Dad with me, it would have made for one of the least enjoyable rides of the whole trip.
The only real excitement of the morning was seeing two rather interesting looking mountain goats. They ran away when I got close so any pictures I took were blurry but I think they were Arapawa goats, which I’m led to believe are quite rare.
The last 30-40 kilometres were better. I changed direction so I no longer had a headwind and my legs seemed to wake up for the first time in what feels like weeks. I think I have resigned myself to riding at one pace over the course of this trip and it’s taken me a while to break this habit now that I don’t have panniers (though I’d like to point out that I’m still not completely unladen). So anyway, hopefully that will continue to Auckland.
Lastly, we owe a big thank you to Nigel and Sonja who cooked a brilliant meal for us tonight.
Distance: 119.1 miles / 191.6 km
Riding Time: 8:06:50
Av. Speed: 14.7 mph / 23.6 kph
Tom Davies RTW 
12000 good lad, that’s 66% by my reckoning, talk about home straight, not be long now, let’s face it any sane person doing a 100 miler would be thinking, hey I have done 66 miles, broken the back, won’t be long now, only difference is you are multiplying that by the 1000’s, but still 2/3rds of the way must be giving you a buzz. Enjoy.
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Hey Tom, you’re not taking the route marked on your website, any reason for that? You’ll have passed my mums cousin in Manaia and my secon cousins in Hawera. Hope you had lovely views of Taranaki
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