Cycle: 27.9km

We got up and had a hearty breakfast of porridge with chocolate chips in - yum! We needed fuelling to get up today's big challenge - the 370m Whangapoua Hill. To delay the task in hand we stopped off for coffee and to call home.

The road began to climb almost as soon as we left Coromandel Town and after 3 1/2 km and nearly 30mins of huffing and puffing we were treated with fabulous views of both sides of the Peninsula and a feeling of elation, for me more than Scott, that I'd done it. We ate some sweets and chatted to Tony from Milton Keynes who was all set to cycle round NZ but a knee injury forced him to leave his bike behind. That was very nearly me.

Sadly, the hills didn't end there. The 3 hills just before our destination were very poorly described in our Bible 'Pedallers Paradise' and we encountered the steepest, straightest hill yet. It was only sealed 4 years ago and before that cars had to be tugged up by a tractor! Ouch.

We got to our campsite early, had lunch on the beautiful beach outside, Scott went for a swim and then we walked up to a local lookout for views of the Pacific (our first meeting since the Cook Islands) and of neighbouring Matarangi. We saw a New Zealand dotterel picking up and playing with several crabs on the beach, there were also lots of toxic jelly-fish washed up due to a three week Easterly wind. We met a lovely local lady who pointed us in the direction of some good shops and eateries in the area and then cooked a bizarre dinner in our lurid, green-painted campsite.

That night we experienced very heavy rain and survived. Scott got dripped on but otherwise the tent stood up to the challenge. The same couldn't be said for our washing hanging in the whirly-gig!