Message to JW from Mark & Phil. This is Phil's cabin overlooking the best right hand break in North Island. The picture doesn't do justice to the cabin, to the handsome Phil, nor to the view right across to the Coramandel Peninsula. The message to JW is that you would be mad not to take 10 days holiday to visit Phil & to sail up the coast for a week. In fact we're unlikely to stop going on about it until you actually do it. X

Day 6 Pakiri to Leigh 14km Gosh we really are slowing down! We've hit an idyllic bit of coast and I'm feeling really blessed. Apart from my unattractively peeling nose that is. Pakiri is a breathtaking 9km of deserted sandy beach 3k down a dusty dirt track. We camped, ate a delicious salad (how is that food tastes so good after exercise?) and awoke to find ourselves in a stretch of heaven. A long stroll along the beach, a swim in the Pacific and we felt ready ...

Yes, ok I was flaked out on a grass verge. In my defence we'd cycled a hard and hilly 80km through the Kauri forest and I was preparing myself for the last 10k into Dargaville. Then Sarah-Welsh-farmer-with-Mazey-dog came along and scooped us up for tea and cake at her house. Her partner Adrian is a NZ dairy farmer from Dargaville. He'd taken over his dairy herd in the 1970s and hadn't missed a single milking since. "I'd like to travel and see something of the w...

Day 5. Dargaville to Pakiri Beach 128km. Spent a couple of hours in the Kauri Museum in Matakohe. A tribute to the European pioneers from 1850 on, it faithfully recreates through photos & artefacts, the life of Kauri loggers (the most valuable timber for home use & export), Kauri gumdiggers (gum was used for varnish & linoleum) and the dairy farmers who cleared the land. Big Dylan would have loved the collection of tools & engines of rural life as...

Day 4. Opononi to Dargarville 91km. Dargarville holiday park. Long gradual ascent into the subtropical Waipoua Forest, last refuge of some magnificent 2000 year old Kauri trees. Prized for their hard workable wood and tall straight growth tens of thousands of acres were clear felled at the end of the 19th century. Pictured is the Lord of the Forest. Jan was caught lying on the verge resting by a welsh dairy farmer called Sarah who had a very mazey like dog on...