My ankle is not happy with me, there is no way I can walk today. In agony I get up to pee. The rest of the day I get around when I need to by crawling. Rowan gets the pillows so I can elevate it and I get the first aid kit out and put a compression bandage on. I basically lie down all day and only shuffle around when one sitting position gets too sore. I am annoyed at myself, stupid, arrogant, stubborn bitch. In hindsight we should have gotten a lift back to Palmerston North and I could have rested up until it was better.

At least we are in a really nice location by the river. The sun is shinning and there are plenty of trees to keep the area shady. We end up resting my foot for another day here with the hope we can keep on moving the next day.

3km down the road and I am regretting leaving the whare.

Woke to rain, more and more rain. It was a pleasant start with only 8km to our destination, possibly 11km if I can handle it. My ankle is sore but I think I will be fine it feels better than yesterday. We set off on the forest road Rowan shows me a sleeping possum in a tree

The track is mostly uphill and the last 50m is steep but you can see a picnic table to motivate you to the top. By now my ankle is pretty sore. We head into Burtons Track a bush walk which is mostly downhill (my ankle is in pain). We stop for a rest and two hikers in their 60s catch up to us. They’re heading to the further spot we were hoping for and they started back at the carpark. We chatted for a while then we carried on, there was no way we would keep up with them.

Further along again we stop and a French hiker passes us. We have a stream crossing which gets our boots wet. A bit further and we are at Tokomaru Stream it is 1pm. Now there is a detour ahead which takes you 2km off the original track but it is steep and much like what we have been doing. Rowan leaves me sitting to see if we could make it the 1km along the river on the original track. Turns out it is private land so definitely need to do the detour. I can’t bring myself to puff and struggle 1.5hr up the hill and struggle back down. I want to stay right here! Rowan is fine with that only 6km done but now we are days to get out, there is no way I am going back so the only way if forward. We relax in the shade right on the river. It is really beautiful and relaxing. Down stream is a deep swimming spot, Rowan helps me across the river and we have a wash, it feels good to shampoo my hair. We relax the rest of the afternoon, pull the solar panel out and read our books.

Rain rain go away! Today was a fairly easy walk, 8km. But man my ankle is sore, I minced along slowly for the day. The rain was relentless, we got over it pretty fast but we sure got wet! At the top of the park was a shelter so we relaxed in there and dried off a bit before setting off again. I can handle ups a lot better than flat or going down hill. There was about equal of both. The rain finally stopped about 30min before we hit the hut, so we dried out a little.

Once we arrived it just rained and rained some more. Originally we had planned to stay here, but yesterday we thought about walking a further 3km today to get a bit further and make the following day easier. Well I really couldn’t walk anymore so we are staying here tonight. Looks like we will have the place to ourselves which will be fantastic. This hut has been erected by the Te Araroa Trust, it is well designed and thought out. This is on council land so they must have gotten permission to put it here. I am hoping I can be moving faster tomorrow, I don’t want to take time off for this silly ankle. There are a few books left in the hut and I have taken one to read, Wild Journeys by Bruce Ansley. I will pass it on when I have finished with it. The sandflies and mosquitos seem to be okay here. We went down to the stream, got naked and washed. I didn’t get in as I was worried about balance so Rowan handed me up bottles full of water to splash on myself. It has taken a few hours to warm back up again. Tonight we have teriyaki spam for dinner, it is surprisingly good.

22.5km! However 4km of this we did with the scooter. It seemed silly not to take advantage and get out of the boring suburbia via scooter.

It has been mostly of roads the whole day. My ankle really started playing up for the last 5km, I hope it feels better tomorrow. We took a good hour out for lunch on a berm. After lunch was the hardest part of the day for Rowan, for me it was the last 5km. We ran into some North bound hikers who were trying to walk as far as possible before Christmas. There was an aim to get to the reserve today but we ended up pushing another 4km to get to the next spot. We arrived at Kahuterawa outdoor recreation hub just before 4pm. We have had a chat to a few people since arriving. Mike a family man with 4 kids is just heading in now (6.30pm) and expects to be put around 9.30pm. We told him we will probably be asleep by then haha. There is full bike tracks and walking tracks through here and about 15 cars when we arrived. It is a busy place.

After I signed off last night we were still having mat issues. Rowan took them into the shower with him and found 6 holes! One on mine and five on his. By this time it was getting late but we wanted to fix them so we headed to the TV room and 45min later they were fixed, so much for an early night! The next day we were awake around 5am the weather for the day looks atrocious, we decide to stay so we can miss the weather and buy more patches for our mats. Onto the scooters we head off and the rain begins. Luckily the wind hasn’t gotten really bad yet. We end up spending the morning, going from shop to shop looking for a rain jacket for Rowan, with bad weather forecasted for our trip through the range it really needs to be better than what he has. Afterwards we get more food from the supermarket for dinner tonight and head to a kebab place for lunch. We get back to the campground just as it starts really coming down. We got rather wet and headed inside to dry off. The rest of the afternoon was spent drying off and relaxing. We were in bed by 8pm, nice and early for tomorrow.

Scootering down the road after 8am on our way to the shops. We end up at Kmart where they have these small bottles we have been trying to get more of. Yay this Kmart has them. It is too early for Macpac to open so we go for Subway breakfast. After sorting out Rowan’s backpack at Macpac, we go food shopping. There needs to be enough food for at least 6 days before we can resupply. With the shopping done I need to go to the pharmacy for more blister packs, here is hoping I don’t need them too much. Then we get some McDonald’s as an early lunch and head back to the campground. All our town jobs done time to sort the food. It takes 3 tables but we now have enough meals for 6 days and two extra days of mix and match if necessary.

The sea to summit mats have been deflating during the night, I am hoping that it is just a valve issue and I put some pawpaw on them before we went to the shops. Next we borrow a pen and get an idea of where we can sleep how many kilometres it will take between campsites. At the moment we have an estimated arrival at the resupply of 4 days. Only time will tell. Not sure if I have fixed our mat issues hopefully I won’t be inflating them throughout the night.

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 😴

The day was a bit of a late start (7am), not really late but we had a big day ahead of road walking. Rowan was not up for the task and to be honest my feet were thankful! I ended up reading an entire book, Catch Me If You Can by Frank W. Abagnale. Rowan read two books.

We had some neighbouring animals including ducks. There were tuna (eels) in the pond. We stayed out of the sun and enjoyed being in the shade for the day. We got talking to the neighbours and one lady Robyn came over out of the blue and offered us a ride. We are very thankful we don’t need to walk the 4km back to the track tomorrow morning.

Two nights here has given us some interesting noises, I have found it hard to stay asleep. Cows, sheep, ducks and possums it is like a funny farm. We started early, it took a bit of convincing to get Rowan moving but we got up nice and early. Just as we were getting into the swing of things a gentleman who had slept in his car got chatting with us. Andrew has been cycling around NZ a lot and he lives in Wellington. About an hour later we said our goodbyes and exchanged details, another offer for a place to stay later on the track. 7.30am we are walking out of the park, but get chatting to the lady who is cleaning the bathrooms. That’s all good we have a nice chat then continue on. It is pretty easy boring road walking, but it sure is hard on your feet! I got a blister the day before from my walk so I was hoping to not make that worse. Roughly 12km into town, we go through a road works area with lollipops at both end. The lady says go just keep left. We get into town about 10am, not bad, we took a few breaks in the shade. Both hungry we head to Subway. We take our time around town and discuss where we will sleep for the evening. There is a freedom camping site a couple of kilometres away but says nothing about tents. We decide not to risk it and walk to the holiday park 4km out. Can’t help ourselves but op shop while here, we don’t buy anything. Then off to the supermarket for some goodies. We have a good 20+ day tomorrow so we want some egg sandwiches to fuel us. I am really struggling to walk, my feet are sore and I lack motivation. We make it 900m from the camp and take a break.

We have a refreshing beer to get us motivated to finish the walk. We are nearly at the campsite we can see it in the distance and a lady pulls up and asks if we are heading there. Yes, we are. She let’s us know we are able to stay for free, she is one of the managers but the owner has gone to Christchurch a few days. Wow we haven’t had that before. The place is definitely the greenest one we have been to. A lot of trees, a pond and of course ducks! I would say 80% of people here are permanent, not sure how quite it will be but I am interested to find out. So far everyone is nice and the place is pretty clean.

We had planned for an early start but Rowan was not well so we hung around another day. The reserve was privately owned and the guy who owned it had no family to pass it on to so it went to the local council. I took the opportunity to walk the 2.5km track around the property. There was a lot of really tall bamboo throughout. You can tell it was someone’s cared for garden rather than a full native bush walk. I took my camera with me and captured some flora & fauna. I will have to upload them sometime from my camera. We spent most of the day taking it easy, there were a few visitors to the park. Wed got talking to a couple who said we can pitch the tent in their yard in Palmerston North if we like. We may just take them up on that offer! We found a few rocks made by people in Palmerston North and Fielding.