130 kilometres and 1500 metres of climbing. A massive day with massively long hills — I even ate a pie for second breakfast. Mostly State Highway 6 with good road surface and very considerate traffic. Some snow spotted on the hills; starts and finishes are definitely getting colder. Stops in Harihari and Franz Josef before arriving in Fox Township after 6pm. Us girls stopped for a well-deserved sneaky gin and tonic before heading to the accommodation. Dinner at Betsy Jane's — delicious lamb and vegetable ragu. One of the great joys of this trip is eating to one's heart's content.

Rinse, reset, repeat.

Huge day — 132 kilometres with 1500 metres of climbing. Three days on the highway now, which is usually no fun, but today being Sunday there were no trucks — only tourists — so not too bad. Moving into the alpine regions now and the rivers fed by the glaciers are a stunning blue colour, very different from the black waters of the beech forests we have been riding through. The team got into a discussion about Gloriavale and started coming up with our Gloriavale names. The team called me Fallen Angel — obviously a nod to the descents — though I settled on Hopeful Biker. Lloyd's is Supreme Being. The things you discuss on the trail. Toodle pip.

Another day of awesome conditions — cool to begin with, very little wind, sunny and dry. Road pretty much the whole day, but for a couple of kilometres of gravel into Franz Josef. Along the way we bumped into Mark, who has earned the tag of grumpy guy as he could barely grunt a reply in the beginning. He now approaches us to chat about the day and asks after ours. We don't know his story but we now have our story of sharing this experience. Just goes to show that if you persevere, you can get results that are worth the effort. The route from Franz Josef to Fox Glacier was very challenging — the elevation maxed out at 29 per cent in one place. Felt good to get that out of the way.

Loving life.