Day 24 Masterton to Martinborough 48km Cycled through vineyards this morning to Martinborough, one of the winemaking centres. Brief stop for coffee in the very upmarket Greytown. It's becoming obvious we're nearing a big city now. Martinborough town is set out with a central monument and grassy area with roads radiating out from it in the shape of a union jack but the town itself and houses have a real American deep south feel about them with wide roads, clapper...

Martinborough to Wellington via Rimutaka incline and a train! 45km. Tailwind from our 5* campsite cabin to Featherstone for coffee, croissant & the lovingly put together film about the Rimutaka Incline. For 60 years until 1955, 5 small steam locomotives were used to drag the Wellington to Masterton trains over the 300m mountain. The track was abandoned for a tunnel & is now used for walking / biking. A welcome detour into beautiful bush & away fro...

We're needing a decent stop every 30-40km & fortunately rural Nz happens to place a village or small town at roughly these intervals. That means a coffee & pie stop. Unfortunately the pies are slow nutritional suicide - only one good home made pie so far - and represent absolutely the triumph of optimism over experience. It also creates the opportunity for a museum stop. In the 70 mile bush stretch of the Wairarapa between Napier and Wellington each ...

Day 23 Pahiatua to Masterton 65km Tent soaked, drizzling hard. Sat around for an hour wondering what to do and decided to set off and get to Masterton as fast as we could in the rain. As per normal in NZ it stopped 20 minutes later and we had a pleasant ride over Mount Bruce. We stopped at the bird sanctuary at the top and went for a 4km bush walk. Saw a Tui (common as anything here) a rabbit, lots of midges and some really big, ugly eels but no birds. A hug...

Day 22 Waipukurau to Pahiatua 96km Not much to say about the day. We cycled, and it went up, up, up, up, down, up, down, up, down, undulating, flat. The scenery was farmland all the way. We had intended to stop in Woodville but there wasn't much there except a fish and chip shop and the Woodville sign (see image) so we headed on to Pahiatua where we had a motor camp field to ourselves. Usual shower, lovely supper, book, bed. Slightly disturbed night, heavy drizz...