Total cycling time 3hrs 10mins.

We started the day by buying me a new Garmin bicycle computer.  Birthday and Christmas present from my lovely husband.  I could not get my old Garmin to find a satellite and start to record the days ride.  I struggled with it last night trying to get it to recognize on my computer and went through all the reboots etc, but this morning it still wouldn’t work.

We still managed to catch the 10:15 ferry from Devonport to Auckland Ferry Terminal.  Bikes were free. We then took the train out to Papakura, again the bikes were free.

Now this might seem like cheating on our first day of cycling, but everyone we spoke to recommended us to take the train out of Auckland.  New Zealanders do not think very highly of their fellow car drivers.

At Papakura, we cycled to Clevedon for lunch.  A really nice road-side grocery store, with ready made sandwiches and meals, very good.  We met a couple from France who were also bike touring.  They rented equipment, and managed the hills a lot better than me.  The roads were nice rolling hills until Clevedon, then we hit large hill up to Orere Point.  What a hill, it was 4 kilometres of all uphill with 7%-14% grades.  I really struggled.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Two weeks of lunches and farewell dinners, obviously took its toll.

Beautiful scenery today, lovely quiet bays and rolling farmland.  A transport truck passed us full of sheep, we met him again further down the hill and there were hundreds of sheep all waiting to be shorn.  I even spotted the tree that is represented in everything New Zealand.