Pipirki to Marton

 From gravel and talcum powder sticky dust to totally sealed roads and no major hills! What a difference a day makes.

We left Pipriki on the banks fo the Whanganui river on a sealed road and had a planned coffee stop at the Gallery Cafe at about the 25 km mark. It was not to be. The Gallery Cafe was there but clearly not open or wanting patrons. We had no choice but to carry on which was all good going and on average downhill so we made good time without requiring lots of effort. The scenery once again changed from the bush clad hill country adjoining the river to more open farmland. The first functioning farm I saw on the opposite bank had me think that there must be a road over on that side - however as I rounded a couple more bends in the road there I saw a very elaborate cable car that clearly was that familys' way of getting to an from the car in the garage on the other side of the river - or back home again for that matter.

The road alongside of the river is carved out of the Pakahi mudstone cliff side in places and is prone to slips so the folk living up the river would be used to it being closed for periods of time after storms I would expect. Being a mudstone it breaks down very easily and then becomes a very clingy type of dust which would be another good reason why serious cyclists don't have hairy legs - I'm not that serious just yet but the claggy filthy legs at the end of the day is having me reconsider shaving again!

We found the "Yellow House" Cafe on Whanganui for a good lunch and there we came up with Plans "A",  "B" and "C" for the route thereafter. Because we had be in the backblocks and out of connectivity with the outside world we had not been able to contact Trevour and Julie (Matt's folks) in Marton who had offerred us beds for the night. We needed the extra plans as we weren't sure if they were home and could host us. So we sheleved plan "A" and ran with plan "B" which had us going as far as we could before veering off of that route to Plan "C" (Plan "C" being the plan that had us riding in to Marton and probably grabbing a Motel). Fortunately for us and with 15 km to go Ruth got a call from Trevour to say all is good please do come and stay the night at theirs!

This route had us deviate from the standard TA route and had 5 km of S H Way 3 riding, in the heat of the day. It was not fun or pleasant at all and was so confirming as to why most of my riding nowdays is on the backroads. I blatted along that section just as fast as I could and we regrouped just of the highway. A on the side of the road committee meeting was held with two votes for the longer way in to Marton off S H Way 3 and one vote for the shortest possibe way (S H Way 3). Being totally a democratic organisation and people free to express themselves as they pleased Ruth and Myself opted for the longer way in to town and Rob took the shorter version. 

The route we took had us once again take in some quite different hill country an one very traditional Homestead "Pembroke" - clearly it must have been the original farm here in years gone by and still appeared quite a large peoperty.

Trevour and Julie have been fantastic hosts and we had a lovely home cooked meal which is one of the things you miss being out on the road as we are and much appreciated.

Because of a few amendments we have made to our original itinerary we have found ourselvs a couple of days behind where we had planned to be and so tonight it was time to re-shuffle things. Fortunately Ruth and I had sat down last week and looked at several alterantives and once I had come up with tomorrow's route our next three North Island days have all come in to alignment.

It does mean I will have to re-schedule my Bluebridge ferry crossing and hopefully I can do this as with Covid now in the community it has affected the sailing of the ferries across Cook Strait. Tomorrow will tell when I contact them with my request.