It was rather cool this morning and it took a bit to get moving, finally rolling out of the Motel at 8.15am. There was no Willie Nelson today as there is competition in the country singing capital of New Zealand, Gore..!

It had been raining during the night and the road was wet and it must have been all of 20 minutes before it started raining again and that set the pattern for the first half of the day. With the rain and the cool temperature, it was double arm warmers and double gloves as well as a jacket and I was still cold.

The road was undulating through some well cared for farming country and there were some good decents before reaching Tapanui.

Found a Cafe and had several of the Southland speciality of toasted cheese rolls and when I was about to leave another strong southerly squal came through, so it was a good reason to stay for another coffee (and piece of banana cake) and wait for it to go through.. While waiting I noticed a number of people coming out of the Dairy opposite with icecreams.. Hardy lot these Southlanders..

When it was time to go, got out of there without the flu, get it, Tapanui Flu.. anyway the rain continued to Raes Junction.. I don’t know why, but I had this impression in my mind that there would at least be a cafe at Raes Junction, but all that was there, was a road sign..!

There was a great decent though just prior to the Junction which dropped a lot of altitude.

Raes Junction seemed to be the turning point in the weather as at this stage the rain stopped and the sun even came out, but then so did the wind, although it was generally of assistance, but I was struggling a bit today so could not seem to take full advantage of it.

Crusied through Millers Flat (or at least the turn off to it), then Ettrick and I was surprised at the level of infastructure with packing sheds etc that was there for the various fruit crops, when there did not seem to be extensive orchards.

Got to Roxburgh and it was time for another coffee and some more of those cheese rolls which I have got quite a liking for.. From Roxburgh the cycle trail again runs parallel to the road and at the dam I did a bit of a detour to the lookout over the dam, before continuing on.

David McCormick had warned me about the road from Roxburgh to Alexandra that it was undulating with some reasonable climbs and he was not wrong and it had you wondering as to when you are actually going to get there.. although this might have had something to do with having already done 100ks by this point and not quite feeling right on the bike today.

I love the landscape in Central as it is so distintive with the shape of the rocks and the barren hills and unmistakenly is Central.

It was a good decent the last few ks into Alexandra and found the booked Motel on Centennial Avenue which is on the way out tomorrow to Cromwell.

Total for the day was 140ks with a climbing elevation of 1,776m.

Destination tomorrow is Omarama.