Hi again.

Thanks for all the encouraging responses and reports on the bad weather in Europe. So far we have been very lucky with the weather and are generally fighting sun burn rather than the cold.

We took a ferry from Auckland to Coromandel Town a week last Thursday morning. The bikes got soaked with salt water spray on the way. In the afternoon we went for a training tour up a gravel road that turned out to be bigger than expected. We came back when we got to the top rather than going down to the sea on the other side and having to climb it again to get back to the B&B.

On the next day our tour started in earnest with the gravel Road 309 over to the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula. It was super. The next day we followed the coast south - very hilly, fantastic scenery, beautiful ocean, not much traffic.

Sunday was an awakening. We wanted to get to Tauranga, an estimated 85 km and a few big hills. The hills were big, but the real problem was heavy weekend traffic buzzing past all day and the fact that there were suddenly 15 km added to the expected distance when we got within spitting distance of our goal (our maps are rather small scale). We got to Tauranga in the end after 103 km for the day, but quite exhausted.

Then we had 2 rest days. We got the bus up to Rotorua (90 km) and spent 2 nights there. The volcanic "experiences" are quite something.

Yesterday we continued here to Taupo (95 km), visiting Lady Knox geyser on the way. The first half was heavy traffic again, then we turned off on a beautiful quiet road and things turned very nice with a hot dip in a thermal pool (37 degC and free!) on the way past. Today we just plan 50 km around a bit of the lake.

At the moment I'm trying to persuade my colleagues to head west from here into a hilly, wild area to Stratford. The standard plan is to head south to National Park and then the coast with train to Wellington. I'll let you know what we've finally decided the next time I get Internet access.

Hope the snow is not getting you all down too much.

Best wishes,

David