Day 12 Notes

Today as I said good bye to Ohakune I realised how lucky I was to have a clear day yesterday on the mountain as the cloud was covering it this morning. The cloud did eventually blow away but I would not like to wait for that to happen. I picked the perfect day.   On paper today’s cycle should have been an easy cycle mostly downhill and only 90km. The reality was the back roads are hard, out of the 90km about 55km was gravel and lots of loose gravel to boot. At times I think I was doing more drifting than cycling with the choice of skinny wheels and I had to sit on the brakes on the downhills.  Although Hunterville is 300m below  Ohakune I  climbed 1088m and descended 1382m  a lumpy day. I think I am also paying the price for going up the hill yesterday as the legs were feeling very heavy.  After I got to Hunterville  I found the swimming pool and it was awesome to jump in and get wet. Now that I am in Hunterville I am going to alter the course a little and go directly to Ashhurst. This will put me a day ahead of the schedule, but it does give me plenty of breathing room to get to the ferry on the 2^nd March by 4PM.

See GPS data here

The mountain is gone on my way out this morning.

Any guess as to what grows in Ohakune 

The start of the day easy riding.

On to the smaller roads.

Still easy going.

And on to even smaller back roads with gravel.

The easy gravel.

Looking back the cloud has gone.

A foot in each district, check out the gravel road.. there was 40 more km of that.

Typical of the day.

Love those hills. It is the real country.

In Hunterville and buggered.