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Day 8 The Timber Trail to Taumarunui

We woke to the sound of rain on our tents .

This created a new skill , trying to pack as much gear while remaining inside a one person tent. I was procrastinating leaving my tent but event succumbed to Darren’s polite suggestions. ( he even packed my tent for me as I was so far behind ).

However the delay did pay off as Clint caught up to us after his marathon ride 120 k arriving very late that night and camping just up the road.

But even he still had to wait for me to be ready . I’m attributing this particularly slow start to my sloth cycling team mantra Well get there when we get there( and maybe yesterday’s crash).

The Timber trail is in my eyes an incredible experience not to missed.

It has native bush that can well be imagined covering this country when Moa’s roamed ( for those of you that know me well I’m not referring to the beers) . Numerous suspension bridges that span cavernous gully’s

The longest being 141m long and 53 m off the river bed. ( after writing this I’m pretty sure I’ll never get Sandra on this trail). The riding just seemed to flow and kilometres were gobbled on the long downhills.

At about 10k from the end my puncture woes returned being as we were close to the end and it was a semi slow leak I made the decision to pump it up ever so often and ride on.

Shortly after discovering my puncture I noticed Darren had disappeared of the back . I stopped and waited and shortly after starting to walk back Darren rounded the corner with a broken chain. Between us we repaired said chain , re pumped my tyre and continued to the finish of the trail.

We rode to Ongarue hoping against hope there was food available and somewhere to clean the mud covered bikes and fix my tyre. Two out of three ain’t bad and the owner of Flash packers was so helpful letting us clean the bikes and offering tools and a track pump to aid with my tyre temporary repair.

We then decided to pedal to Taumarunui , due to fatigue and yet again hunger we made an oversight and strayed from the TA route. Fortunately upon realising this we found a turn off and were able to get back on track. We struggled against a cruel head wind and yet again arrived as the sun was setting.

Mr Pizza was directly opposite where we entered the Main Street of Town.

We were swiftly through the doors and ordering. After scoffing our Pizza’s we rode in the dark the 6 k to the holiday park (shut up legs)

The camp proprietor was in an exceptionally jovial state and was very helpful setting up lines in his garage to dry our tents and store our bikes.

We also partook in luxuries like hot showers and machine washed with detergent and dried clothes.

I attempted to catch up on this blog but when I woke up with my phone on my face decided sleep was the priority.