We decide to stay here another night and explore the area. It takes a while to get Joanne’s bike back together before we head off.

We enjoy looking around but decide to go back and bike down to Mt Sunday (Edoras, Lord Of The Rings), then walk as far as we can. The manager here gives us permission to fly the drone. Mt Sunday is on their station land but they have given it to DOC to maintain and allow public access.

The bike ride gives us a chance to see if something goes wrong before we set off on the Alps to Ocean. It all runs smoothly. My shoelace gets wound around my pedal and I try to come off but fall into some matagouri. Luckily I don’t get too spiked. We also see a rare bird called a Wrybill or Ngutuparore. It is endemic to NZ and it is the only species in the world for have a bent beak sideways in one direction. Always to the right. Unfortunately they are not showing off their beaks but we get a few photos. There is a tour group ahead of us and we can see them coming back down the hill, swords glistening from the sun. Turns out four fans are here to take photos with their LOTR swords. We puff our way up to the summit and enjoy the expanse. Rowan got a lot of good drone footage earlier when no one was here. So we only put the drone up very briefly as we don’t want to disturb others.

Our bikes are all working as they should, we head back as it is definitely wine o clock. We have an addition, a man from Melbourne. Callum is here to see all of the LOTR sights he can. He is really nice and we enjoy the rest of the evening with him.

Here is a photo of Joanne getting caught for the second time today. We are going to take a pic each time she gets tangled up haha.