Cycle: 106km

After a great night's sleep in the luxury of our motel room we were pleasantly surprised to rise to a fairly sunny day. We were both excited about our plan of trying to cycle round Taranaki by the more inner "ring" round.

Hawera really is nestled right under Taranaki so we were looking for signs of it as we left town. Claire, chief navigator for the day, led us through a network of farming back roads up to the inner mountain ring road. As we turned off the state highway we realised that a big triangle of cloud in front of us was the huge volcano shrouded in cloud. A little disappointed that the mountain was covered we pressed on.

The skies directly over our heads were glorious. After four days of fairly nondescript cycling, bad weather and mediocre accommodation today reminded us why we were cycling round New Zealand and how magical our days can be. Taranaki gradually unveiled itself as the day progressed and as we worked our way round the volcano the sun fell behind us and the snow clad sides fell into their true white colours. We were treated to amazing views of this volcano with green fields in front and blue skies behind.

The only down point of the day came when we approached a road closure. The road was closed to "all vehicles". We thought we might be able to sneak round but the road was closed where quite a large bridge had been washed away. The resulting gap was completely impossible to cross so we had to extend our day's cycling and tackle a few more hills.

In the end our potentially shortest day on our return route up the North Island turned into our longest! Luckily it will probably be the best so was definitely worth it.

We checked into our motel room in New Plymouth just as it was getting dark. I was feeling very, very tired after such an unexpectedly long day with some serious undulations right at the end.

The hostels in New Plymouth aren't too great so we splashed out (again!) in a motel and enjoyed the TV and ate a nice home cooked meal in our little kitchen. We had been considering sacking off our ride up Taranaki but after a shower and a little rest both decided we definitely wanted to head up it the next day!