Cycle: 124km

Up early as we needed all the daylight hours available to get oursleves the 120-odd km to Fox! We had our usual reaction in such a situation; sturggled and grumbled, rubbing our eyes in the murky weee hours and then loving the first hour of cycling as the sun came up and lit the scenery beautifully. "We should do this every day!" etc was uttered many times during the first couple of hours! It helped that the scenery was amazing. We crossed the Haast River as it reached the Tasman Sea (we'd followed it all the way from its starting point at the Hasst Pass), went through a dark, freezing cold section of dense rainforest and then popped out on the coast with rainforest on our right and the Tasman Sea crashing onto the beach on our left. There were also wetland areas and as it was a still day they were reflecting their surroundings perfectly.

We stopped off at Ships Creek, where the remains of a wrecked clipper on a voyage from Liverpool to Melbourne had washed up in 1800 and something, and wandered around the dunes and admired the views for a while. Next was the hilliest section of the day, the Three Knights - three short sharp hills with as much gain as loss between each. They were fun though (we like a good hill!) and we were rewarded with a stop at Knight's Point lookout on the way down the last hill. The view remined me of the Great Ocean Road. We covered oursleves in sandfly repellant (can't believe the freezing cold weather of late hasn't killed the little blighters!) ate something and peeled off our leg and arm warmers for the first time since leaving Invercargill. We were so excited to be cycling in the warm sun again, we thought these days were all behind us!

The next part of the cycle took us away from the coast and past two very pretty lakes, with a backdrop of snowy peaks, through more rain forest and past very green agricultural land before reaching our lunchtime destination, the Salmon Farm Cafe. We had a doorstop toasted smoked salmon sandwich and bowls of coffee and were too full for the fruit cake we'd also bought! It was a great rest stop as we toasted ourselves by the fire (althogh it was sunny you soon cooled down when you stopped moving!).

The second half of the day took us over many bridges (a few were mini-suspension bridges), through more rainforest and gave us spectacular mountain views. A highlight was a short stretch alongside Bruce Bay where we were really close to the sea and there were warning of debris on the road due to high seas. We had a break at the start of the Copland Track and at this point we were about 20km as the crow flies from Mount Cook Village, where we were about two months ago but it had taken us this long to get round!

We reached Fox Glacier both feeling pretty pooped, we'd ridden hard today and didn't coast any sections. The "Welcome to Fox Glacier!" sign about 10km out of town was a bit heart breaking! We bought some suppleis in the little store as the sun was setting and checked into the holiday camp to get our cabin for the night. Itw as another fiver-bedder and the camp was spanking new and clean. We had a late dinner and got chatting to some Sydney-ites who were doing the same day glacier hike as us tomorrow. So much for an early night!