Cycle: 68km

We were reluctant to leave such a nice and relaxing spot as Raglan so lingered in the backpackers and small town centre for as long as possible. We typed up some log, emailed, shopped and chatted to the hostel managers, one of whom, Ian, was a cyclist from Scotland and had cycle toured in Europe, so we had plenty to talk about. Finally we dragged ourselves away and retraced our steps for the first 13km along SH22 before turning off at the junction for Glen Murray, our destination for the night.

The road was fantastically quiet, we must only have seen a handful of cars all afternoon, so we were able to comfortably cycle side by side, something which has been fairly rare. The scenery was green and the hills rolled under a grey sky so talking away made the afternoon pass happily. I got the BBH booklet out to check exactly where our hostel, Ewe Dream Inn was in Glen Murray but I needn't have worried as there were only about five buildings in the 'town'!

No one was at home when we arrived to check in so I followed the instructions on the door and after a few phone calls got through to a neighbour over the road who gave me the code to get in. We weren't really sure what to do as the hostel looked rather like a lived in house, complete with breakfast dishes still in the kitchen sink, so we sat on the sofa feeling a bit like spare parts with our bags piled up in the lounge. After waiting for a while nothing happened so I went and had a shower and when I was in the bathroom Gavin, a possum trapper and long term tenant, came home and showed us which room was ours. It turned out he lives here on weekdays and runs the show for Jeremy, the owner and local vet. Gavin cleaned up the kitchen and we had our tea then watched TV with him. He went off to bed in the shed out back and we stayed up in the main house and watched Casino Royale on DVD. Awesome movie, better the second time I think, even when the TV and DVD player switch off mid-film! It was lucky we decided to stay up late as the bed sheets had not been changed in a while and it was not an enjoyable place to lay our heads! We put all our thermals on to cover up as much of our skin as possible and tried to ignore the stains - erghh! Nevermind, this is our last hostel - woo hoo!