It feels right that I should wrap up writing this as I am on the flight home, with a few hours to go before landing in Gatwick and being reunited with family and friends. It has been fun to document this experience in a new way, and I am pleased that others have been reading this blog. I managed to kill several hours on the plane earlier by going back to day one and reading the first entries. It feels like a different time now. This may have been the longest month of my life.

It is 25th February. This has always been the end date. My flight from Invercargill, the Southern most airport, 30km from Bluff, is midday tomorrow. This means that I need to finish today, but that I can finish as late as I need to. With 136km to cycle, this is a comfort, particularly given that I am in no rush to leave this morning. I am still so tired. I have a feeling that I have been burying the symptoms of a cold for the past few days. I am slightly congested and I still have a stiff back and neck. In the night, I had a bit of a fever too. My body can rest on the 48 hour journey home. For now, I just need it to do this one last thing for me. I need it to get me to Bluff… ideally before sunset. Fortunately, that will be the end of my pedalling. Mikayla and Sherree have arranged it that their brother, Blair, and his wife will pick us up from Bluff and take us to our hotel in Invercargill tonight. This saves the extra 30km of cycling after finishing and really takes the pressure off.

I lift myself out of bed at 7am. It’s raining. My personal plan was to leave when the rain stops, but Will said last night that he’s keen to leave by 9am and I don’t want to hold the team back. I go to the kitchen to make myself a protein shake with the last of what’s in my bag. As I go to shake it, I fail to realise that the lid isn’t on properly and spray it everywhere. Not what I needed today. I clean up, make myself a lot of toast and eat some cereal. Will is up and ready to go. We eventually leave at about 10am, during a break in the rain.

The route continues on from yesterday with about 10km of cycle trail. For whatever reason, this path has telegraph poles in the middle of it. I recieve an alarming message from Mikayla saying that Blair can no longer pick us up this evening. I normally ignore messages when cycling, but this one breaks me a bit, and I have to read it thoroughly. The next thing I know, I am cycling straight into a telegraph pole. Myself and my bike are fine. That could have been a disappointing end to this story.

As always, Will and I have been sensible and have broken the day into sections. We deliver on the first 30km with minimal effort, pausing only to put on some suncream and to eat a quick snack, before then knocking out the next 20km. This is our quickest yet. Gentle downhill on sealed road, with the sun starting to shine on us. A tractor passes us slowly and the next thing I know, Will is gone. He’s seen an opportunity. He pedals behind the vehicle enjoying the slipstream, staying on its tail until reaching a slight incline. As Will whizzes along at 40km/h, I lag behind on a pathetic 30. I don’t mind though. It’s still good progress.

Will waits for me and I catch him up. We then do the last 20km to Winton. We find ourselves caught in a cross-headwind and slow right down. The weather greys over again and we push hard to make it into town. We arrive at 2pm and opt for the pub over a cafe. This ends up being something of a mistake. The vibe is a bit odd. There’s a room full of retirees on the slot machines, gambling away their pensions. In the eating area, it’s just us and the TVs overhead are playing music videos from songs you forgot existed. The woman behind the bar is friendly and really hypes up the apricot pizza. Will orders this and I opt for my token fish n chips. These are underwhelming, but consumable, unlike Will’s pizza. He is not impressed. As we are leaving, with Will outside loading the bike, another member of staff asks me if we would like a doggy bag for the pizza. Thanks, Will. This is mine to deal with now. I say that it would be too bulky to load into our bike gear and make for the door. She suggests just putting it in clingfilm, and I pretend not to hear as I make my escape from the weird pizza. Dissatisfied, but sufficiently full, we crack on.

As we are approaching Invercargill, at roughly the 100km mark, I have a bit of a wobble and request that we stop. We have thus far spent the whole day on quiet country roads, with practically no cars, and are now entering a busy town with busier roads. Furthermore, that nasty headwind is still lingering, and I am having a hard time going in a straight line along the very narrow shoulder. I don’t want to risk stumbling in front of a car. I take a moment to eat my apple and enjoy some sweets and allow my energy to come back. Will patiently waits and we continue when I am ready. To our relief, it is not long before the course takes us off of the road and under a river bridge and onto a cycle trail. This trail now goes all the way to Bluff. We are done with New Zealand drivers.

No one hypes up this last section of the trip. There is one way to the end point and it is not that glamorous. That being said though, I don’t think it’s been that bad. However, there is a scent lingering in the air and we quickly realise that this trail pretty much takes you through a sewage plantation. Nice.

Having been protected by some bushes and trees here and there for the last 20km, the trail then takes us parallel to the open road and there is now nothing to break that headwind. The weather is still grey and there is a gentle drizzle now showering us, right in our faces. We take it in turns to ride in front, enjoying each others’ slipstreams. This bit of teamwork is necessary as we have now forged ourselves a deadline. There is a Four Square 2km from the endpoint, and we both want some bevvies for the finish. It closes at 8pm. This means that we need to average at about 14km/h. This would be easy without the wind.

I decide that some music is needed for a bit of motivation. I set Spotify to random and leave it to mum to decide what we need to hear. She certainly has her say because half of what plays is Queen. Every tune is a banger and I find my legs working like never before. This is the final push now. For once, we know that tomorrow, we won’t be doing this all over again, so our bodies just get on with it.

The route curves along the coast and the headwind turns into a crosswind. We see a sign reading “Bluff”. We’ve made it to the town, but our destination is Stirling Point, a few kilometers further. We reach the supermarket with time to spare and are greeted by some young kids outside who ask where we have cycled from. We bluntly reply with “Cape Reinga” and they look back in disbelief. I suppose 3000km is a bit of a long cycle ride.

With our bags loaded up with tinnies and bubbly, we embark on the final 2km stretch. The crosswind that started as a headwind is now a tailwind, giving us a final push over the hill and to the end of Highway 1. There it is. Stirling Point. The iconic yellow signs can be seen in the distance and slowly comes into focus. We’ve made it.

It has been 3122km of cycling since I said goodbye to Bex and the boys. My steed has held out well, with only one flat tyre since leaving Cape Reinga just over a month ago. My pannier rack may have had issues, but my bike didn’t. One set of brake pads later, but otherwise unserviced (my God, does she need one though). As is fairly mandatory, I thank my travelling companion by lifting her in the air in a celebratory fashion. I should have realised that I’d need to take the panniers off before attempting this. Will does the same and we each take some token finishing photographs. A woman in a camper van approaches and gets chatting. She takes some photos of us together and when she learns what we have just done, she disappears and comes back with a creme egg for each of us. Our trophy.

I close Google Earth on my phone. The little red line that I have been following since January has now finally ended. I have reached my destination. We take some time to chill before Blair arrives and get chatting with two girls who have been on the beach collecting shell fish for their dinner and a man named Joe visiting from Durham. There is a group of teenagers blazing up in a car parked near us. They find the whole situation quite entertaining as we are lifting our bikes up and having our celebratory drinks. As they drive off, stoned out of their minds, we take a sigh of relief to be off of these roads.

I crack open a champagne (yes, champagne, not prosecco – I’ve earned this) and Will does a “shoey”. I have opted against this for safety reasons. There’s a lot of mercury in the water and soil on the Big River Trail and I feel that drinking contaminated champagne is a rubbish way to die having just endured 3000km of cycling hardships.

The sun sets and shortly after, a ute pulls up with two friendly faces hopping out. Blair and his wife are here to collect us. We enjoy a lovely chat in the car ride to the hotel. He has been reading the blogs so knows of my adventures. They give me a card and I open it to find a message from Sherree. It is bonkers to think that six weeks ago, when setting off on my adventure, I did not know any of these people. To be fair, I did not know Blair and his wife until a few moments ago, but here they are, doing their bit to help myself and Will. If there is one take home message from this trip, it is that Kiwis are the kindest people on the planet.

We arrive at the hotel. It is more of a bed and breakfast, with only a handful of rooms. They are not expecting me. Crossed wires between booking.com and airbnb mean that two people have managed to book the same room and I am the latter of the two to arrive. The owners, Stew and his wife, figure out what has happened and ensure me that I will have a bed for the night. I end up on a mattress in the living room. To be fair, it’s a lot bigger than what I paid for. Will and I each have a fairly subpar dinner, eating the last of our travelling snacks. I then finish my champagne in the bath, listening to and reading all of the kind messages of congratulations that have poured in over the past few hours. I go to bed sad that the adventure is over, but relieved to finally be taking a break from the saddle.

The next morning, I make my farewells to Will and we each wish each other luck on our next adventures. Stew kindly drives me to the bike shop and I start disassembling my travelling companion. This time, the handlebar washers are staying firmly on the bike frame. I deflate the tyres and have fun removing the pedals. I then get another lift from Stew to the airport and am relieved to learn that my bike box with all of the other bits in it, such as my camping gear, is 300g under the luggage limit. I use my last Kiwi dollars to buy breakfast at the airport and begin the journey home.

The adventure is over now. I have had my whistle stop tour of New Zealand. This has been an entirely new type of adventure for me. I have never done anything like this before. Having stayed in just a handful of backpackers, or as we Europeans call them, hostels, along the way, I am right in that I am changed from seven years ago when I last did this length trip. I don’t enjoy hostels anymore. My exploring has been a little secluded since my backpacking days, nearly a decade ago, and I have largely kept myself to myself. I didn’t want that to continue, but I didn’t want to force myself into social situations for the sake of it. This trip has been perfect. I have loved everyone who I have met and it is exactly the type of trip that I can see myself doing more of in the future. All I needed was a bit of confidence;  the ability to strike a conversation with anyone, no matter who they are. This is something that mum taught me. She did it very well. Any person, from any walk of life, was never too good for or beneath a conversation with Kirsty Macaulay.

Something that has been in my mind since I first booked the flights for this trip is that this is somewhere that mum was always meant to go. Her and Tony had planned their holiday shortly before her diagnosis back in 2019. It’s one of the reasons that I chose this place. I know that she has seen New Zealand now, because she was with me for every second of the ride. Thank you, mum, for joining me on my adventure, and perhaps more importantly, thank you for teaching me how to ride a bike.