Having spent my time enjoying a week of the island’s best trails, it’s time for me to get a move on. The course now relaxes into hilly, winding sealed and gravels roads until one reaches Wellington in exactly 500km time. I have booked my ferry crossing for the afternoon of 11th February. This gives me five days to cycle 500km. This is the standard I need to maintain now in order to reach my destination before my flight home. We will see how we go.

The Tour Aotearoa connects up some of the country’s best cycle trails, but in their occasional absence, it’s roads, and it is now time to push them out.

I am woken up at 6am by the sounds of farm animals and decide to embrace the early start. I pack up my tent and eat my breakfast whilst being harassed by chickens. I then say goodbye to Charles and Lynn and ride the cable car right after them with one of the owners, Kelly. He needs to collect some deliveries from the road and has offered to drive my bike bags up the steep gravel path. Even with the bike being naked, I still have to push her up the perilous driveway. I say goodbye to Kelly and begin today’s ride.

This road is bad seal. Some sealed roads are silky smooth and one can glide along them at 25km/h with practically no effort at all. This one is not like that. This one is rubbish. I push myself up the first big climb of the day, with an older woman whizzing past on her e-bike about halfway. This hurts. I see her at the top shortly after. I earned this view, love. I then zoom down the other side and into Whanganui, the largest town I’ve seen since Auckland – so city-like that it even has cycle lanes. I eat a massive lunch, buy some food for the next couple of days, and continue the journey.

At this point, according to the official guide, we are supposed to take a lift 100m up a hill to a nice viewpoint before carrying on. I fail to find this lift and therefore gain that 100m in altitude through my own efforts. There are no bonus points for this. Instead, all I have is a fatigued state to enjoy and 70km separating myself and my campsite to crack on with this afternoon. I manage to do 45km in one hit. This is largely due to the excellent seal. I then take a little suncream/water break and move onto the next 20km to the nearby town Hunterville.

One of the canoeists had asked me the other day what I think about when I am riding and I didn’t have an answer. I still don’t really have an answer, but something I calculate on this particular grind is how many revolutions my bike wheels will do during this trip, provided I reach the finish. The answer is about 1.3 million each. Mental maths is a good way to occupy the mind.

Once again, I find myself in a race to a restaurant. The only food outlet still open is the hotdog place and it closes at 7pm. It’s 6:40pm and I’m feeling confident, until the road steepens and I find myself struggling my way up another hill. Once I reach the summit, it is 6:55pm and I lose hope. Nevertheless, I soar into town and find the restaurant door open. I ask the man if I am too late and he replies “I am here, so it is open”. I drink two coca colas in quick succession and devour a hefty veggie dog and fries as Klaus (the restaurant owner is called Klaus) pulls up a chair next to me and asks questions about the trip. He is from Austria and is also blown away by the Kiwi kindness. He was once motorbiking on the South Island with his wife when their chain broke in the middle of nowhere. After several hours, a car passed and the man asked them what the issue was. He said he’d be back in an hour to fix it, and sure enough, he was. He then treated them to dinner and all.

After an uneventful campsite stay, the next morning, I set off early and find myself slightly lost when my phone decides to lose signal and reset itself, thus losing my route altogether. With that said, I follow the gravel track, pushing through the hills until my phone reconnects and I find myself where I am meant to be. I pullover for a cheeky suncream and snack break and dine in the presence of several chickens and cockerels, all increasingly growing in confidence. With a high risk of them getting any more friendly, I decide to leave.

It’s a short journey to my next destination, Apiti, where I intend to treat myself to a pub lunch. It’s a scenic ride with a few climbs. As I am nearing the top of the final ascent, my back wheel suddenly comes to a halt. I get off the bike to investigate. It’s very stiff. I then realise that my pannier rack is pressing against it. That’s why it’s not moving. But what’s gone on here? I inspect the rack and realise that the bolt securing it to the bike has completely snapped. Ah. That’s a problem. I take the wheel off to check it out from the other side (and to make things look more dramatic to passings cars). That’s a very stuck bolt. An Allen key can’t help me now. I stand on the side of the road weighing out my options. As I am doing so, a van slows down and the couple inside offer me a lift to Apiti. I have skipped 7km of the route, but it was going to be all down hill anyway, so I wouldn’t say I’ve missed out on any pedalling.

The man drops me off right by the pub and a pair of motorcyclists, Trevor and Tar, come over to investigate the drama. Trevor gets his pliers out (I really ought to invest in a pair of these by this point) and has a crack at removing the old screw. No luck. We need something smaller. As I am digging deep in my panniers to find a new bolt to fit, should we successfully remove what’s left of the old one, Trevor is chatting to locals in the hope of finding anyone with a small set of pliers. Soon enough, a local lad he has found comes over with a set the right size and after a painstaking bit of twisting, we manage it. I re-assemble the bike and finally treat myself to fish n chips.

I then hit the road again and decide to take an alternative route. I can’t make it all the way to Ashurst tonight following all of this drama. I instead choose to settle halfway in Totara Reserve. This is no longer connected to the official route’s gravel road following a bridge collapse, so I take the sealed road running parallel to it on the other side of the river. The road is quiet and scenic. I have since learned that the gravel road is very loose and no fun to cycle down. I have also heard from Sherree, who took the gravel road and then had to cross the river with her bike in order to get to her campsite. To be fair, we’ve done worse on the course already (90 Mile Beach flashbacks).

I had to arrive early today in order to finally wash and dry some clothes. I lay everything out in a bright patch and make sure that I have chosen a spot that will remain in the sun as she moves across the sky. I then realise, when my clothes quickly find themselves in the shade, that the sun is moving in the opposite direction to what I am used to. This is the Southern hemisphere. Upside down right is left. I don’t know why I never thought of this.

The next morning, I pack up my still moist clothes and enjoy an easy ride to Ashurst. I post some bits that I am no longer using (such as a drone controller) back to the UK, do some food shopping and enjoy a nice catch up with Tony, during which a kind lady on the street offers me a can of Pepsi. I then continue to Palmerston North (not a very exciting place) and collect a new (significantly cheaper) drone for the road ahead. The route out of town is then a steep highway (not enjoyable), followed by a less busy stretch of country road. I arrive at the next little village on the map, Pahiatua, and have myself a late gas station lunch of chips, pastries and a massive milkshake. Healthy. On the last 35km stretch, I get a stitch (unsurprisingly) and to top it all off, my ETA gradually increases for the last hour as I am matched with an increasingly intense headwind.

I arrive at my campsite in Eketahuna and as I am setting up, two bikes pull in at the tent next to mine. They are a lovely middle-aged Scottish couple selecting the best bits from Tour Aotearoa and making up the rest as they go along. I am impressed that with no bikes present, I was still able to sniff out the cyclists amongst the tents.

Now begins my final push along the road before reaching some trails again. I set off early in the hope of making the most of my Airbnb booked for this evening. The first 40km to Masterton fly by quickly on a mixture of sealed and gravel road. I have myself another divine pastry on what is now my cafe tour of New Zealand and then embark on a very flat and fast 50km to Martinborough. This ends with more countryside and breathtaking views of the endless vineyards. I love the little towns like this and stop by to enjoy a curry in the village cafe and bar before my final 20km push to the Airbnb in Featherston.

I arrive at about 4pm, delighted to have the whole evening ahead of me. I wash and dry all of my clothes in the sun; I finally shave and I charge literally everything that I own. This is a wonderful moment to get my life together again before an early start tomorrow morning.

It’s been a different four days. They’ve largely blurred into one. I’ve mostly cycled through pleasant countryside, but broadly speaking, I can’t distinguish one field of cows from another in my memory bank. It’s been a long time since I have seen another TA rider, just a few rogue-route cyclists along the way. I wonder where Paora is? Is he whizzing ahead of me or trailing behind? Will our paths ever cross again, or did I see him for the last time zooming away on his jet boat? I definitely feel a disconnect from the earlier stages of the adventure now, but I am hopeful that the next section will be fun. I’ve cracked out 424km and 4728m of elevation in four days, tipping myself way beyond the halfway point of the trip. Three weeks after my first cycle ride, I am now 82km from the port in Wellington. Next stop – South Island.