Just missing out on a scholarship to the UK, he decided to make the trip under his own steam in 1958. He spent all of 1959 overseas in the UK and Europe before sailing to Canada then driving down North America's west coast to San Francisco from where he sailed home.
Recollections of his travels were later published by the Te Puke Times in a book called Travels by Bus.
Back in New Zealand he found his and Gael's parents has hatched a plan and the couple were married in 1961 in Te Puke Methodist Church.
Initially they lived in an old workers' cottage on the family farm.
Deciding to make their own way in farming, Cedric and Gael moved to the Top Farm - a separate block from the main family farm.
The 162ha farm had just one clean paddock, with the rest unfenced and covered in regenerating scrub and wattle. The farm was broken in with the minimum amount of machinery.
The hard work with few monetary returns that was the reality of farming had a big influence on Cedric, whose social conscience led him to stand for parliament as a Social Credit candidate in the 1975, and three subsequent general elections, following his father Joe.
"I said to him if you are so concerned about it then do something about it and I think he was happy he tried," says Gael.
Cedric and Gael moved into the Papamoa Hills in 1987 to a block of land that was to become Looking Glass Garden, now a well-known drawcard, especially for families, but that wasn't the plan - it just grew with Gale the gardener and Cedric the builder.
Cedric built a dozen or so nursery rhyme-themed buildings that are scattered around the gardens.
While Gael and Cedric now lived on the other side of Te Puke, Pongakawa was still in his heart and he wrote an updated history of Pongakawa School called 100 Years and Counting and also a history of the Blaymires family called A Square Mile of Scrub.
Around 15 years ago at a public meeting four groups - including a group that would become Te Puke Environmental Forum - were created.
Gael was part of the forum from the start, and Cedric became involved and was its chairman and treasurer for a decade.
In 2011 Cedric presented the idea of a circular walkway just out of town to the Te Puke Community Board. From the germ of that idea, the Te Ara Kahikatea Pathway was born.
In 2013 Cedric and Gael bought a house in King St, Te Puke, complete with a large section ideally suited to creating a mini urban version of their Papamoa Hills garden.
They moved into the house 18 months ago. They were jointly awarded the Lorna Treloar Memorial Citizen of the Year award in 2016.
Gael says her husband was extremely generous, cared little for what other people might think of him, and was never happier than when he was tinkering with machines - or talking to people about tinkering with machines.
One of the town's collective memories of Cedric will be of him waving to the crowds as he drove his tractor in the annual Christmas Parade.
Cedric's funeral was at Te Puke Methodist Church - a church he had a major hand in building in the early 1960s and a legacy of his overseas trip.
While in England he saw a Sorbeu mobile sawmill and, when he could afford it, imported one. Using donated pine trees, the mill produced the timber used in the church construction.
Cedric and Gael have five sons and one daughter and five grandchildren.
