Te Kuiti - shearing capital of the world

The ride from Hamilton to Te Kuiti was a pretty uneventful one. The day was cool with overcast and only a few spots of rain so I set off after a huge Cameron breakfast. Lachie marvelled at the weight of all my gear (I do have too much) and even offered to chuck some in his car and drop off some of it for me when he drives down to Christchurch next week.

Crossing Hamilton was easy and I even managed to ride along part of the course for the upcoming Hamilton 400 motor race though I was only doing a sedate 15km/h! After leaving Hamilton and passing the Temple View Mormon complex (which is massive) I managed to hit 50km/h on one downhill stretch. It's generally downhill with very little traffic all the way to Otorohanga where the traffic picked up once I got onto SH3. At one point an errant logging truck driver got very close as I approached a narrow bridge. He or she gets today's Dickhead driver award.

The camping ground in Te Kuiti is on the local domain and home to several Maori families. It's basic but clean, though the timing system for the showers leaves a lot to be desired.

It was here that I met my first fellow cyclist. He's a retired gentleman from Manchester (UK) and heading from Christchurch to Auckland in three months. We ate dinner together and on showing me his map of where he'd been I noticed that he'd missed out one night stop. He spent about half an hour trying to work out where he'd gone wrong. In the end he gave up. We never swapped names, but the next morning while packing up we thanked each other for the company and wished each other well.

And if your'e wondering why Te Kuiti is called the shearing capital of the world.... maybe it has a lot to do with all the sheep around. They even have a big statue of one.