Cycle: 140km

Following advise from our hosel manager, todays target was Reefton, a small town which made its name from gold mining and had the world's (or maybe NZ's?) first electric street lighting I'll have you know. Another world famous in NZ!

Scarily, it took us about a million hours to complete the first 50km as the wind was blowing so hard along the valley and into our faces! We cycled through a rain storm at one point but thankfully came out the other side into blue sky. Due to our terrifically slow pace today's tactic was to only pause for the briefest of comfort stops and to throw some cereal bars down our throats! As we neared the final climb to Lewis Pass the scenery became more beautiful (and more like Scotland!) but blink and you'd miss the summit of this historic pass! The notice signifying the summit was poor but I was chuffed to have made it so had my photo taken with it. When some people who had driven up to the 912m pass had their photo taken with the sign I felt more justified in my photo!

We had the most awesome 7km descent before pedaling, although technically going downhill, into the terrible cafe at Springs Junction (now we knew why we had been given strict instructions to go straight on to Reefton!) We were pretty pooped so forced down some sorry looking quiche before tackling the Rahu Saddle (670m), the final climb of the day. The highway was now almost deserted apart from Scott and I and I felt as though it was just us and the mountains. I was really enjoying it until about 20km out when I became the hungriest and wobbliest I've been yet. Scott towed me in and we were greeted with a well facilitated, compact town and friendly locals, including Mitch the possum trapper, who had the ability to say "f**k" and "ay" an incredible number of times each sentence. Nice guy though.