Day 7 Paparoa to Mangawhai heads

The plan is to ride from Paparoa to Kaiwaka for a midday meeting, and then on to Mangawhai and our bach.

Yesterday we started riding at 7:15 and were way too early for our planned meeting venue, today we are more relaxed. We also need to take time to do justice to Tony's breakfast. Finished, we pack and farewell Tony and Maggie - with hugs even! They are lovely hosts. We are on the road at 9:30.

The road today is harder than yesterday, loose stone, more climbs, many turns, steep

cambers. We won't make Kaiwaka by midday for the meeting. We will be at Mangaturoto a bit after 11 - We wait then have the meeting, stretching a coffee over an hour while Sau Keng works.

The alternate to SH12/SH1 to get to Kaiwaka is ominously named 'Mountain Rd' Fortunately it is named for the mountain it goes around, not over, and we do not climb very high, unfortunately we do it several times and this road is even harder for Sau Keng than this morning's riding. She gets slower and more nervous as we proceed - the loose stone and heavy cambers are tricky for me too.

The camber is worse than it looks, Sau Keng

uses the most level part of the road

There are pretty good views of the river going up to Mangaturoto to compensate.

We are almost at SH1, very unlike Sau Keng to be looking forward to riding on a State highway! Mountain road sneaks in a final climb, steepest of all, and finally the gravel is

behind us and it's downhill to Kaiwaka on SH1.We want a rest and spot eutopia, a café Tony recommended. Very cute and quirky! My hash brown sticks are different, tasty and good too.

19km to Mangawhai. Not far and thankfully all on sealed roads. How many cars will there be? Too many, way too many. How come Mangawhai is so busy on a normal work day? Near the end we make a long climb and now it's downhill to Mangawhai town. Our first bad driving experience happens as a large truck closely follows me at 40km/hr down the hill. Really traffic has been very considerate to us :-)

View while coming down the hill into Mangawhai

Mangawhai :-) It feels we are almost home, we just have to get to our bach at the heads. We transfer to the footpath which becomes a cycleway - with an impressive new bridge.

Charging station: 2 trike batteries, 4 tail lights, power pack. Cell phones elsewhere

Up the last hill for the day, a brief stop at the 4 Square shop and we are home. 5pm, it's been a long day and we are very happy to be here. Relaxing to be in our own space too.

Statistics

Distance: 65.5km

Climbed: 934m

Time: 5:16