By Ruth
Distance: 34 km
Today was a long day. A day with several distinct sections of trail. Most of which sucked.
The first section of trail was a hilly forest/farmland track. It looked pleasant but was anything but. It was so muddy and slippery. I was walking very carefully and still managed to slip and fall on several occasions, leaving me shaken and upset. Then, on a flat section with lots of tall reeds, Elliot fell into a thigh-deep hole filled with water.
After the slippery mud slopes of doom, we entered the razor grass highway. This was a section of trail a few metres from the state highway. The trail was very overgrown with the type of grass that has sharp edges. Walking through it feels like getting a hundred tiny paper cuts. Not to mention the grass was wet, so our feet were immediately soaked through. Also not to mention the noise from the highway was very hard to ignore.
After that section we walked past an incredibly noisy racetrack . We could hear the sounds of tires screeching for kilometres.
Then, we arrived at the chin-high river reeds, where an incredibly overgrown and somehow also muddy and slippery track followed along the bank of the Waikato River. Each step felt like a 50% chance of sliding down into the river, which we managed to avoid doing through sheer luck. To add insult to injury, right on the other side of an electric fence from the “trail” was a perfectly manicured meadow.
And then, we reached a very scenic section, where we went up and down some small hills on the river bank. The trail here was not overgrown, however it was still uncomfortable to walk on because under the grass the earth was very uneven. My ankles were twisting unpredictably with every step. Then, I saw a small bridge up ahead, not even really a bridge, more like a short section of boardwalk over a ditch. I was so excited to walk on something flat, even if only for a couple of meters, that I hurried towards it. Fatal mistake. As I reached the bridge, I tripped over a clod of dirt hidden under the grass. I can’t remember exactly what happened next, but eyewitnesses say I went flying, doing a somersault over the edge of the bridge down into the ditch below, and kept sliding until I was nearly in the river. Amazingly, I escaped that little incident with nothing more than some shock and a scraped knee.
At that point we had being going for several hours without a break, so after I climbed out of the ditch we decided to stop there for lunch and to recover a bit.
After lunch was a bit of a slog, with some road walking and some walking through cow pastures next to a road, but nothing quite as bad as the earlier sections of the day. We reached Rangiriri around 5pm, and decided to stop there for the night. We walked into town and found the trail angel’s backyard that we were planning to camp in. But it was a pretty unappealing place to stay: really close to the highway and very loud because of that. And there was no shower. So we cooked our dinner there while we thought about the situation. After eating we decided to press on another 9 kilometres to the Huntly Golf Club. It has showers and is on the other side of the river from the highway. Two hours later and we arrived. And yes, we are camping on a golf course tonight.
Overall, today was one of the hardest days on the trail so far (still not as bad as Day 2 though!). Here’s hoping for an easier time tomorrow.