Cycle: 7km

Our train didn't leave National Park until about 2pm, so a lie in today! Hurray! And our stuff was completely dry! Mega-hurray! Thank goodness we didn't camp - there was torrential rain through the night! Hurray!

The train ride down to Wellington was really good fun. Claire and I made plans for our adventure round the South Island which we were getting really excited about. We pretty much came up with a plan which took us round all of the major roads, to all of the major sights and, most importantly, over all of the major Southern Alp mountain passes! Hurray!

We hadn't booked a hostel or campsite in Wellington because we were sick of wet weather and really, really wanted to be dry for the night. The weather was good and the ground was dry when we got to town so we decided to camp. There isn't much on offer in the city in terms of campsites, so we tried our first hostel which was Rosemere. This was up a very steep hill and had the tiniest patch of grass at the front with two tents completely occupying all the room. Boo! We tried the highly rated place round the corner but they were full. Rosemere didn't even have any rooms available at all...

We soon realised that we were in a bit of a predicament. The light was fading and we were in a strange city on our bikes with nowhere to stay. Luckily the mighty Lonely Planet (all is forgiven) came to the rescue by recommending the only place to really camp in town as Rowena's Lodge. This did indeed have a tiny area of grass for camping on, along with 13 other tents... The hostel was a bit minging - the bathrooms and kitchen were particularly unpleasant so we were happy to be in our own dry bedding. I guess this is a reflection of a big hostel not being able to cope with the sheer number of guests passing through. There's a kind of critical mass point where people stop caring and cleanliness plummets. This was that kind of a place.

Still, we cooked our dinner and as the wind dropped slept soundly in close proximity to all our stubborn camping comrades.