BRR Waikaremoana & Moto Assault Day Three

Day Three started a bit earlier, waking to the sound of rain on the roof and then been very pleasantly surprised by the epic breakfast our moteliers had prepared for us - fantastic!  But the rain didn't even look like stopping so we had to load up and head out in it.  Today we were down to 6 of us as 4 of the others decided to gap it for home - other things on and the unfriendly weather putting some off.

First up we fuelled the horses and then made our way out of Gisborne and onto the Tiniroto Road.  Somewhere in the murk Neil missed our first turn but he soon had us off the main road in search our first bit of gravel.

Our first stop of the day was at a nice little camping area beside a river.  No photo's of the river as I couldn't find anywhere to park the Vee without it sinking into the ground and falling over...

220kg dirt bike

We hit gravel immediately after the stop and it took us on an interesting and winding ride through farmland and bush.  The weather alternated between drizzle, rain and dryish.

The Gopro also started having fogging issues by the looks of it.

We then got back onto the Tiniroto Road again for a short while before we once again found more gravel just like the first lot...

After more splashing about we rode the last section of Tiniroto Road on into Wairoa where it was time to grab some lunch.

After we'd stuffed our faces we refuelled the bikes and took off into the rain for the ride back through to Napier.  Even in the rain it was a great ride and as always I was pretty impressed with how the adventure rubber sticks to the road even in crappy conditions - we were easily keeping up with and passing all the other traffic on the road.  I only had a couple of wee moments and these were in situations where a little sliding was always going to happen.

The weather cleared up just South of Tutira and I enjoyed the dry roads through to Bayview where we all said goodbye and went our separate ways.  For the trip back to Palmy I had Russell for company and he sat behind me all the way as we had a bit more fun on SH50 before settling down and behaving for the rest of the cruise home.

The GPS says 1,199.9km for the weekend and it was one fun packed 1,199.9km for sure!  Neil's already planning our next Queens Birthday getaway so I'm chaffing at the bit already...

Good horse!

More pics here.