Day 3 rail trail

Slightly wet and soggy start to the day - needed raincoats for the first part of the ride and then it was cold so needed coats to keep warm, and gloves and could have done with extra socks - very cold toes!

Made it to Ranfurly by 10 and spent some time looking around their little museum which was a pleasant chance to warm up a bit.

Then there was nowhere for about 32km so we had lunch in a Gangers shed as we were starving.

Oh, and just our luck - the wind had changed so we had to pedal - going downhill!

Lovely views even with the grey cloud !
One bridge, one tunnel and one viaduct later we made it to Hyde where we've just had yummy crumble and home made ice cream for pud!

Oh, and we've been doing a study of the ground surface on the rail trail (which is increasingly important now we have to stand up on the bridges which have planks going 90degrees to direction of travel!) Anyway there are big bits of grey/black stone which is quite bumpy, then there is medium sized grey which is okay but the best is the fine grey/brown stuff which is a bit like big sand. We had some mud and puddles today as well which Martyn tried to avoid - guess what I did - yup - straight through the middle kersplash!

Anyway, all down tomorrow so could we please have no headwind, fine grey/brown gravel and blue skies!