"Day Eight starts before dawn at the Leviathan, up for a creaky-backed shower. Had to reassemble the faucet when it came apart in my hands last night, but it's sort of working now. We get packed up and downstairs and the blue-haired girl at the counter opens the garage door for me and I load up the bike. We head along to Baldwin Road, the steepest in the world, and I stare up it an giggle as Jo insistently reminds me to let her off before I try to tackle it. It's nearly vertical, from here, but I decide against it cause it's a residential area and the bike will be screaming. So off north through pea-soup fog and condensation on my visor, then everything clears up for the long morning ride to Palmerston. We stop at café there to plan our day, then back on the bike for another half our to Moeraki, where we walk down the beach to look at the almost spherical sandstone boulders left by millions of years just above the tide line ... we both take some photos while waiting for all the Chinese tourists to move out of the way and stop destroying everything".(MM)
