Tour de la Paihia

After a morning of perusing the gift shops and finding me a nice towel to replace the one I lost (may have forgot to mention that earlier) we tried to go for a swim. But the weather had other ideas, although the sun was shining the wind was more than blowing which made it a bit cold and a bit choppy to go swimming, especially with the rocky shores. So that was the end of that idea. Back at the hostel we met Stephan, a German and decide to go explore the coast by bike. After cycling up a steep enough hill we then followed what we though had been the suggested route. However it turned out to be a very long very steep down hill which was great fun to go down but the fun soon wore off when we came straight to a massive’ privet property, no entry’ sign. So instead of going back up the hill we tried o go round it. There was a track to take, it may have been designed for mountain bikes and not road bikes but that didn’t stop us. After cycling along on a bit we found our chosen road off to the left, at first it appeared to be a good choice, ok a bit steep to start with but then the path seemed to go round the massive hill not up it. Well we were wrong, once we got round the corner it shot up off the hill again, the same happened with the next corner and the next and the next until finally we could go no higher as we had found ourselves at the highest point for miles. But luckily this also happened to be the point we had aimed for originally so hay alls well that ends well. The point is self was a look out across Waitangi and Paihia and was a pretty nice spot, if not for the sunned sprinkling of rain, but it soon passed and we headed back to the hostel. On the way back we decided a race would be good fun about a 1km track down the hill round a few bends and with a bit of an up hill to end. So we waited for the bulk of the traffic to clear then we were off. It was neck and neck at the start between all 3 of us but a 3^rd of the way down I managed to open up a bit of a gap, but as I geared up to gained more speed the chain started to jump so I was loosing power and it wasn’t long before Stephan came shooting past me just before the end of the hill. Into the bends he held a good 10 meter lead and I was struggling to make ground, but going into the up hill he had to higher a gear and lost all power closing the gap right up but would it be enough? I peddled my hardest and was slowly catching him and just 5meaters from the line I took the lead and took the win. Take that Germany go find so French to beat. After catching our breath and taking a sneaky visit to the supermarket to avoid the rather serious downpour we got back to the hostel and rested are rather tired legs.



taking in the view



the view

the start line