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We set an alarm to watch the sunrise. Unfortunately, we were at a spot on the beach that was facing ENE, so we got a secondary sunrise over the top of the extinct volcano crater that is Marfells Beach. It was still spectacular. We made coffee and walked on the beach a bit, then packed up the tent and gear and headed on to our WS hosts, Ad & Anna in Kaikoura.

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Our little railroad car was quite comfortable and the kitchenette made making coffee and breakfast much easier. We packed up and headed back into town as there is a hardware store that is open on Sunday and I needed a couple of metric screws to attach Dana’s third water bottle cage. Very windy today and my bike blew over while I was working on Dana’s. We’re heading into that SE wind today heading south on RT 1.

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Another early day as we wanted to get to Wellington to see some of its sights before hopping on the ferry to Picton & the South Island. We did see Catherine for a brief moment as she was letting Sponge out, but everyone was still in bed and by the time we packed everything up and got the bikes loaded at 8:30 AM, still no signs of life and we didn’t want to disturb anyone’s Saturday sleep-in. I sent a note to Dylan thanking him and Catherine for the great stay, and we set off for Wellington.

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We’d been carrying a bag of oatmeal since Te Kauwhata and finally opened it for breakfast, with a side of coffee from the convenient little kitchenette in our room. Today was going to be a long day, so we needed the fuel. We both enjoyed the respite from riding and got a great sleep to prep us for the ride to Pukerua Bay.

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The last post of the Timber Trail saga. We had a good rest and woke early at 6:00. Got packed up and hit the trail again. 20 km (12 mi) left to go. There were still some ups and downs, but there were also some very good downhill sections with a nice crushed gravel surface and we were able to pick up some speed. 

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It rained most of the night. We got up at 6 am to get an early start on the next part of the trail. We skipped making coffee and breakfast to get on the way faster. Cloudy, but no more rain. Already we were having doubts about how rough this trail was (we had info that it was gravel, but mostly it was single track MTB intermediate level). However, our only other option was to back track the way we came and ride by road to Taumarunui where we were catching the bus on Thursday. That option didn’t appeal to either of us, so we sallied on.

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A hearty cup of coffee, yogurt, cereal and some more lively discussions, goodbyes and thanks to Marin and John, and we were off to Pureora and the Timber Trail. A quick stop in town to get a tarp for a tent footprint, and we headed out. A little drizzle started falling just a few miles outside of Otorohanga, and soon was a steady rain.

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At breakfast we continued with last night’s conversations. As Colin had builders and an electrician coming that day to work on his house, we bid Colin good-bye and he gave Dana a big home grown Avacado and a few hard boiled eggs for her lunch. We packed up and headed into town to get some cooking gas and visit the local bike shop as I still needed to have some work done on my bike.

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Another good night’s sleep and we got up to bid Theresa adieu as she had to leave to visit a sick friend. Darren fixed up breakfast and we got everything together and bid him goodbye, too carrying a couple of apples and a banana courtesy of Darren. We stopped in “downtown” Te Awamutu to visit the hardware store and get some gas for our camp stove as we hadn’t confirmed a stay that night and our backup was to camp at Lake Ngaroto. No gas at the store!

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After a good night’s sleep and some breakfast, we headed out on our way to Te Kauwhata and our Warmshowers hosts, Darren & Theresa.