Distance: 0km. Total: 547km. Smell fator: 0/10.
Rest days days are no longer sacred. Trail life is invading. Days off now include: writing, shopping, cleaning, washing and planning for the walk. If I am lucky, I can sneak a tactical powernap in there somewhere. But then, trail life must continue! You have maps to study Tom, boots to clean! Don't get me wrong, this is all good and well; it is certainly a friendly invasion. No violent struggle against intergalatic tents. The trail comes in peace. Just dont expect me to know anything going on in the outside world when I get back. Brexit whowhat? I live on planet Te Araroa now. The Hobbit.
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Distance: 18km. Total: 547km. Smell factor: 1/10 Today we did our first kayak section: Then, we bounced from rock to rock all afternoon. Then, we arrived in Orewa. A populated area, what do you think we did. We ate. Bliss. However, this was not what we would usually expect sag-aloo to look like.
Distance: 30km. Total: 529km. Smell factor: 7/10.
Forests are tricky little buggers. You can walk 1km and it feels like five. They taunt you with false peaks, attack you with their flailing bush and break you with the relentless undulation. Concentration is key, else you are punished. I consider myself relatively sure footed and enjoy bouncing from root to root where possible, but any cockiness is quickly preyed upon. It is not wise to take your eyes off the ground whilst walking. Ive cursed myself on numerous occasions for walking five paces whilst I also check my surroundings. Naturally when your eyes are elsewhere you waver the most; this is a habit I need to stamp out if im to walk the more treterous southern Alps unscaved. Consquently, long periods of time in the forests are generally hard on the body and the mind. However, the forest would not break us today. Today we would reach our 500th kilometre. The rutted ground and bad weather had ensured a rough nights sleep. We both emerged grogy and tired. Regardless, we ploughed through the forest that morning with our goal pushing us on. We jubliantly reached the trig point and the 500 kilometre point after another cruel climb. Then, after a brief celebration, we pushed on with our minds set on a cafe 2km away. Hopes were high for this breakfast. So much so, we had fueled ourselves with just protein bars that morning. We should have been more causious; we had been tricked by other phantom cafes on the trail. Two weeks earlier we had aimed for a pub only to find it had closed two years ago. Likewise, Kiwis seem to have a relaxed attitude to opening times! You can imagine the torment of a closed cafe when food means so much. But, again, today this was not the case. Today this cafe was open. We feasted on breakfast, reveling in our progress. 500km is significant in my head. We can now begin to comprehend and express our achievement. One sixth complete, one region complete and in one month. Of course, we do still have an enormous way to walk, but, I take confidence from the progress so far. As a result, we walked another 27 kilometres after breakfast. The terrain was testing enough but we charged all day and conquered all its obstacles. The energy may have derived from breakfast, it may have been the lighter pack owing to the reduced food weight, but either way, today was my strongest day on the trail. I felt good. I had confidence in my little legs. There is no doubt that tougher sections lay ahead but our mindsets are strenghtening. Look out trail, we are coming for you. The Hobbit. Distance = 18km Total =499km Smell Factor = 5/10
Sometimes I hate being right! It was so cold in the night I must have woken up every hour trying to find the warmest system possible. I had pretty much all of my clothes on so I couldn't add any more layers. I tried creating a cocoon with my sleeping bag but it didn't work, stupid long legs! They come in handy for the walking bit but boy do they get in the way of having a comfortable nights sleep in a tent. Neither of us wanted to hang around in the cold so we got going quicker than normal. Another forest today and once again the trail didn't make things easy. This particular section of the trail was opened by Sir Edmund Hillary himself, I'm sure he would have found the up and downs a doddle but having not climbed Everest in training for this trip I found it tough going. There wasn't as much mud as there was in the northland forests but the continual up and down really took it out of me. The sneaky false peaks were a real moral sapper but we trudged on. We tried to head for the trig point at the top of the 'dome track' with the knowledge that most trig points have a clearing around them where we might be able to pitch up. It was dense bush so no other camping spots had presented themselves for a good few hours as we pushed on into the early evening. We finally broke through into a clearing; the trig point, we had made it. Oh wait no we hadn't, the trig point was another hours walk away. An hour with a steep decline before another steep climb. No thank you. We managed to squeeze both tents in to this tiny clearing. It never even crossed our minds to share a tent, that's not happening! Separate tents all the way to bluff. Another cold night was in store so we cooked an extra hot dinner and went to bed before the temperature dropped too much. The Turner |
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