It’s not even a word but it is the best one to describe today.  I woke at 11.30pm to see the eclipse, it wasn’t that special so I didn’t wake Rowan (he was angry at me for not).  We got up and was ready pretty early.  Robyn dropped us into town before 9am. We had subway for breakfast and began walking. 2km in and I was wondering if we were there yet. We stopped about 5km in and found some shade, then continued another 5km to Bunnythorpe and had some lunch. There was a small dirt track and across the water on a log instead of using the bridge. We had stopped at the public toilets and there was a dairy. I decided I wanted an icecream and Rowan was going to get a cold drink, well the shop was bare no food in it part from a couple of coke cans. Well that was a flop. Continuing on it took us for a few km along farm land and farm roads, I don’t know how many styles we crossed but there were a lot. I fell flat over at one point when I got tripped up, luckily I didn’t damage my camera just my ego. I was annoyed that we had some other terrain, my feet were killing me but I was bothered that they were slowing us down by making a farm detour. We finally arrived into Palmerston North but still had about 9km until the campground. We had walked 17.5km. We decided to bus or scooter the last bit as we were not going to make it. We found two flamingo scooters and took them into town. It took a bit of getting used to it and we were on our way. My feet still hurt really bad on the scooter but at least we got there a lot faster. We ended up eating an early dinner at Carl’s Jr before carrying on to the campground. Finally at our destination at 6pm. Unfortunately no time to get our errands done. Rowan has to go to Macpac and we need to get all our meals sorted for the Tararua trail.

I am so exhausted I am trying to type this out and nearly falling asleep, the road walking has taken it out of me. There is not much shade which didn’t help, I drank tonnes of water but hardly went for a pee. I can see why majority if people hitch these parts as they are incredibly boring but also hard on your feet. I am glad at lunchtime that I added on some blister plasters, I am sure my feet would have been worse if I didn’t. Now summoning the energy to go brush my teeth. Better go do it before I fall asleep 😴