The day begins great, Mark & Kerry offer us a lift to bypass all of the road section. Part of me wanted to say no, but we say yes. We had already made the decision that we are not allowed to put a thumb out but we can say yes to lifts if they are offered. This now means we don’t need to walk the purple alternative road route, we start at the 314km mark. This is 20km taken off our day already. I was tempted to have a rest day in Whananaki because we need one but this was worth another day. We knew we would need to break the hike up into two if we did all of it.

I feel a bit car sick once we finally reach the drop off point. We picked up another Te Araroa Trustee who is helping and doing a car shuffle with them. He automatically recognises us as his friend Patrick told him all about us. We met Patrick on Ocean Beach, he had the Ebike I was envious over. We get a photo with him for Patrick and we head off down the road. It is about a kilometre before we hop onto the farmers track. Eventually we reach a style which gets us into the bush, I see how muddy it is and we get our gaiters on.

We find a spot where the farmer (Rowan) has a small tank of drinkable water and a area for hikers to camp for the night. This is where we would have needed to stay to break up the walk. Further along we slowly climb up the ridge until we meet some cows. Which follow us in hope for some food. They are not happy when they realise we have none and moo very loudly.

We are now back on farm track for a while, until we get back into the bush. Once on the official Helena Bay Ridge Track we have a break. We need a lot of breaks today, mentally doing fine but our bodies are so tired. Rowan is trying to work out if our bodies are in need of something like protein. One of our biggest issues with todays track is we were told it is all down hill. Well it’s technically down, but there sure is a lot of down then back ups. My knees hurt going down and my thighs and legs burn going up. It takes us some time to walk down into Helena Bay

Dave a trail Angel comes and picks us up. I am very thankful as I am well worn out. He doesn’t live far off the track but I was done. Alex & Dave have a cool off grid set up. There is a caravan for us to sleep in, a flushing toilet and a hot shower. Dave & Alex Cook us up some Kai while we have a shower and a drink. Alex is an artist, it is really cool to see her studio. We eat and drink into the night, however we don’t last long. In bed by 8pm absolutely knackered, they say we can stay another night if we are needing a rest. Which I think is what we will do.