I spent heaps of time last night researching this next section. I knew it was probably a two day section hike with a river I needed ta monitor. I was hoping I could pull a big day and do it in one go if I didn’t have to detour.
It seems to be ok (without actually seeing it!) but I made notes on my map of fallback options just in case. River safety has a pretty simple premise. If in doubt, stay out. And I intend to.
I walk off down the road, feeling pretty happy with the world. I’d had a quick yarn with family last night which alleviated some feelings of homesickness.
I hear the Mangaokewa River before I found it. What a pretty sound flowing water makes. The river was fine, no problem at all with height or flow.
I walked upstream for a while and detoured around the Limeworks. (Fun fact; did you know lime is used in products as diverse as roadworks, toothpaste and top dressing? Yeah, same. I didn’t know either.)
I finally enter bush after some 3k from my starting point, cross a bridge and I’m on to the Mangaokewa Reserve for a 15k hike along the river track. The first 4K is along a groomed trail with glimpses of the gorge and then it’s over a fence into paddocks.
I walk through a lovely eucalyptus forest. Smells like home.
And then... it’s back on to the road. My feet hurt at the end of this section. The last half of the day was about 30k on the road, including sections along SH30. It’s tough going, even though I stayed on the shoulder as much as I could. Although that helped to reduce the pounding of my feet on road surface, it upset Katie a bit because I had long stretches of walking on an uneven slope.
This tested me a bit, I have to say. I had wondered before today what sort of thru hiker I am. Am I a purist, committed to walking every step or am I pragmatic and happy to hitch road sections. I totally get why people do; perhaps life is too short to spend it toddling 30k down a road.
Neither option is wrong of course. HYOH right?
Despite two offers of a lift, I walked it. Question answered I guess. :-)
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