Days 2 and 3 - Broadwood to Helensville


I'm sitting on the Kaipara charter ferry awaiting a 3 hour trip down to Parakai. This has been a key focus since starting, with 2 biggish days of riding.
Yesterday was a magical and a big day from Broadwood down to Dargaville, approx 140km and 2,100m of elevation. 
The early morning ride over the back roads and hills to the Hokianga was fantastic, looking down over the mist covered hills.
I needed to wait about 45 mins for the short Hokianga ferry ride to Rawene.
I joined with a number of other riders for breakfast at the Rawene Boat Shed Cafe - was fantastic. Unsurprisingly the riding is giving me a big apetite..
A highlight of the afternoon was the 24km ride through Waipoua Forest. It's always been spectacular and it was magical riding down through the forest, although it did involve a couple of big climbs.
It was also super hot with the ambient temperature into the mid 30's with the heat off the road.

In the late afternoon, we rode through Donnellys Crossing, a small settlement in the middle of nowhere where the locals had set up a wonderful refreshment stand.

A lot of back country roads - this was a bigger one.

I decided to push on from the option of staying at the Kauri Holiday Park for the two hours into Dargaville, getting there about 7.45pm..
This involved navigating through a maze of back country farm service roads to Dargaville. A highlight were the trail angels, in this case a couple of school, perhaps older, boys who had set up a stand at the end of their farm driveway, giving away water and water melon, which went down a treat. I wished I had taken a photo. Here's a couple of FB photos, credit Sam Brook.


Today was a bit more relaxed (so far) with a 70km ride down to Poutu Point at the entrance to Kaipara Harbour. Still a few hills to navigate but nothing like yesterday. I rode for a large part with a group of guys that I have met along the way.
It's 3 hours on the water to Parakai, then a short'ish ride to Hellensville where I'm staying tonight.

Some of the 60+ on board

Ferry making it's way up the Kaipara River towards our destination 

Tomorrow will have me biking through Auckland before hitting the Hūnua's.I expect to end up somewhere between Clevendon and Miranda





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