I crossed the river at Aratiatia, and rode back along the left bank towards town. I repeated a short section of yesterday’s ride: along the road and down Totara Gully again.

This time I turned right at the bottom, and came to Hot Water Beach, where I ate my lunch. Then on to Huka falls and across to complete the Rotary Ride.

I don’t plan to ride tomorrow; my legs need a rest!

The next three hours was spent exploring the Wairaki trails. Running through a mix of pine and eucalyptus plantations, the network featured numerous bridges where trails crossed. A lot of work has gone into making great tracks.

By early afternoon my muscles were starting to protest, but when I arrived at the car I couldn’t resist a bit more. I rode the Totara Grove track down to the Waikato, then downstream to Ferguson’s track and return.

Since then my legs have felt like jelly. I hope there are a few Km left in them for tomorrow!

I’m camped at De Bretts, and have enjoyed a long soak in their pool. They’ve got a great new zoom slide, but my tired legs could only manage two climbs of the steps.

The track I chose next; Huckelbury Hound, turned out to be the one adrenalin junkies use. I got a bit over confident and had my first spill for a while.

After lunch I rode the 4.5km Tuhoto Ariki trail, which travels through native bush near the top of the ridge. It was muddy and rooty, much more challenging than anything else I’ve ridden recently.

I’m extremely knackered after almost five hours riding, and a long soak in the hot pool. Should sleep well (again) in the back of the wagon.

By this time I was at the Redwoods Information Centre, so I set off up the hill into the park. About 45min later the distant thunder had shifted directly overhead, and the drizzle was getting heavier.

So I turned around, enjoyed a fantastic 15min of downhill, carried my bike most of the way down an impossibly steep 10mins, then rode out to Tarawera Rd under the trees.

By now I had my coat on, but everything was starting to get wet, so I returned to the car and caught up on my email. Then the sun came out, so I hopped back on the bike and road for several km along the Tarawera River.

The trail lead through a thermal area I’d never seen before, and eventually ended up next to the Polynesian Pools near the downtown area.

By now the weather was looking dodgy again, so I headed back to the car.

Now that I’ve had a feed and a long soak in a hot pool; I’m ready for sleep.

Sure enough the sky cleared and we had a great run from Millwater around the estuary. We continued on over the hill to Hatfields and stopped at the north end of the beach.

Right beside the road I spotted a tree laden with ripe peaches, which tasted great!

I parked a little way up the Scenic Drive next to the filter station on the corner of Woodlands Drive. Trying to ignore all the broken car window glass, my friend John and I set off along Exhibition Drive, following the pipeline. The first few kilometres were very easy on a flat metal road that followed the contour of the hill.

All the way we were in beautiful native bush, with views of the Huia reservoir and the Manukau beyond.

Beveridge Track itself is mostly uphill, and leads to a fantastic viewpoint a few hundred metres before the end of the track at the Arataki Information Centre. It’s fairly exciting coming back down, but you have to beware of pedestrians.

On the way back we rode a few exhilarating hundred metres under Redwood trees, which made me remember just what a great place Rotorua is for biking.

30 mins later…

Now I am 3km further down the track at the Mangapurua Landing, because Kerry got bored. A jet boat is going to take us back to civilisation in an hour or so.

The track was easy and scenic. The first 10km had quite a bit of uphill on a metal 4WD, but after that it was mostly down, down, down. Some parts were a bit slippery after last night’s rain, but the mud just added to the fun.

Some of the huge bluffs and slips had signs telling cyclists to dismount, and some were so scary that we actually did.

All along the way, wooden signs had the names of families who tried to settle this remote area.

The jet-boat ride down to Pipiriki was an unexpected bonus. I had forgotten what a spectacular river the Whanganui is.

When we got as far as we could go we rode back on the shoulder of the highway to the Tongariro National Trout Centre, where we found a trail back to town.

Lots of fun, without too much effort.

Our shuttle driver Gary dropped us at Okahu Road about 8am, and we set off back to Minginui on one of the most scenic lengths of single-track I have ever been on.

There were heaps of huge Totara and Rimu towering over the Beech Forest. Kakas screached in the trees above us, and wood pidgeons flapped clumsily away as we came near then. After a mostly downhill ride, we arrived at Skips Hut and stopped for our first rest.

Then we climbed over the first serious hill of the day to the historic Rogers Hut. It is built from hand adzed Totara, and features a stained glass window.

While we were there a helicopter flew in and dropped a fencing wire cage in a clearing just down the track.

The next leg climbed steadily through more awesome mountain scenery high above the river, until it crossed a ridge and dropped down to Moerangi Hut.

By this time we were hot and sweaty, so we jumped into the stream to cool off before eating the roast wild pork sandwiches provided by Darline at the lodge.

After a bit of a rest we realised that we would have to hoof it if we were going to make it back for our 2pm pickup.

About a kilometre down the trail, Kerry remarked that it seemed a long 500 metres, which we expected would bring us to a DOC sign indicating the way to the road end. But the the trail was beautiful and I shrugged off his comment and continued on. But after another kilometre I realised that the nagging doubt in the back of my mind was growing, and we discussed the possibility that we were on the wrong track, heading deep into the Ueweras.

We decided we needed to be sure, even though we were under time pressure, so we rode back all the way to about 500 metres before the hut. There we found the sign that both of us had flashed past without noticing, right where it should have been, showing that we had indeed been on the correct trail.

The third trip through the scenic gorge was a bit more rushed than the first, but shortly after reaching our turn-around point we started on the longest climb of the day.

It would have been nice to have rested on top of Mt Moerangi. If we had we might have discovered we had cell-phone coverage, and could have rung Gary to delay our pickup.

But we raced onwards, flying down the long hill to arrive almost 45min late.

Gary must have forgiven us, because he served us an excellent dinner of roast wild pork followed by his famous pavlova.

What a fantastic day!