As we both 'forgot' to save an alarm, we, again, woke up later than planned. Once we were all packed up the incredibly nice, incredibly talkative owner chatted away to us for about an hour. He said he would be going over to Hawera at lunch time and said we should be arriving by 3ish.
The 36km ride to Stratford had 3 nice hills that certainly woke us up and at the top of one we met 3 English bikers who we again chatted away with for far too long. Members of the campervan club who we had met at Te Wera continuously drove past us hooting and waving, which made us chuckle. Our worse downfall was lunchtime. At first we deliberated whether to peddle a bit further to Manutahi, which we quickly decided against. We then sat eating at this cafe for 3 hours.
With 33km left to cycle and what we thought was going to be a flat terrain we weren't too fussed. However, the rest of the ride was up and down for most of the way and we were going against the strongest winds yet. Then the owner we had chatted to for ages drove past us cycling out of Stratford at half 4.....we were ashamed for him to see us with so little travelled.
With Mount Taranaki appearing occasionally out of the clouds we quickly snapped a photo of it with a great pose from Tom.
Once we arrived at the small campsite we quickly put a wash on and walked into town where we again ate some more alongside a couple of pints.
