We woke to a nice looking day. This is the view of the beach at 6.30 am as the swimmers gathered.

Today we were doing an out and back 108 km ride, lots of gravel trails heading to the town of Kohatu and a well known bakery for lunch.

Leaving our accomodation we followed the well marked Great Taste trail and deviated to Pic’s factory. We do eat this peanut butter brand at home (crunchy)!

Unfortunately they were closed today so we took photos of the large replica jar!

There was plenty of track signage, with options and some broader scale information.

Once we left the urbanised and industrial areas the country vistas opened up. In places, the track was muddy from recent rain. We did manage to get the bikes quite dirty today with mud splatters.

We crossed quite a few bridges. This one is quite long. The warning sign about not crossing during flooding makes you wonder just how high the waters can inundate.

Not a lot of water currently.

Hills and agricultural activities increased. We saw lots of pumpkins being grown, a fruit tree farm, hops and a berry farm (we stopped on our return for a very nice raspberry icecream).

I particularly liked this old house now dilapidated but still with personality and character. The neat line on the hill behind delineating forestry and pastures seemed harsh.

Another bridge crossing and a hop farm.

We weaved around through forests providing shade as the temperatures increased.

An old gate that does not look like it is used often.

The main climb today was to Spooner Tunnel. The elevation graph below is real despite looking like a cat or dog profile, or perhaps Batman.

The climb follows an old rail line, was in excellent condition with compact gravel, mushy in parts from the rains. The gradient was a very kind 3 % average.

Spooners Tunnel is the longest cycle/walker tunnel in the Southern Hemisphere at 1.4 km in length. It is one of the highlights of the Tasman’s Great Taste Trail.

The tunnel was originally built in 1891, dug by hand, with two groups of men working at each end to meet in the middle. When they did meet, they were only 8 mm out!

It was a congregation site today and we met an Auckland couple on holiday who kindly took this photo.

We had a pleasant lunch in Kohatu with our newest cycling friends. It is one of the pleasures of touring meeting like minded souls. Their vehicle is behind with Anne’s other yellow passion on top.

Then it was time to head back as we still had 52 km or so to ride.

Despite the headwind, the return ride was easier as once we climbed back to Spooners tunnel, it was downhill!

We made a few deviations on the return, had a bunch of trail motor bike riders buzz us including two on pee wee’s that would lucky to have been 5 years old and totally unsupervised. An older lad was the recipient of my opinion about his reckless speed. 😳

An icecream at the berry farm and we bumped into more cyclists who recognised us from our lunch stop.

As we closed in on our accomodation, a super large lady flew past on her ebike, wearing her cooking apron. Maybe she’d forgotten an ingredient and had something in the oven she needed to rush back for.

Final look at the beach before showering and washing our gear.

Tomorrow is a big day. Christmas Eve and we have the notorious Takaka Hill to conquer. It’s off to bed we go.

Thanks for reading. Smile on 😊🚴❣️