Saturday 14 November 2015

Of Forests, Beaches, Puppies and Biitumen - Day 11 Beachside Holiday Park to Wikere lLandung (water taxi) then to TA 293.5km

The water taxi picked us up just after 8:00am for the trip across to the landing.  It was a perfect morning and the trip across the Bay was a perfect start to the day. Mikela who drove us talked about the Bay, about TA walkers and her preparation for this amazing MTB trip she is doing across the States into Cental America - next trip?

Today's walk consisted of some road walking through farm country before entering Russell Forest. To say I was abit nervous about entering a forest again would have been an understatement, but I didn't need to worry as today's walk ticked all the right boxes. Walking up the river was so much fun. The water wasn't too cold and mostly shallow. We walked from shoal to shoal and my shoes finally started to turn from baby poo brown back to grey.

We stopped for lunch at at a DOC shelter before a climb back out to the road. The road was where the suffer quotient went up a bit. The afternoon was hot and the heat was intensified by the bitumen. I had only intended to do 8km more before stopping, but Alex and Harriet we're going to push on to a DOC campsite at Helena Bay.

I was walking up the road when I spotted a man coming out of his driveway with a small fluffy, shag pile dog in tow. He didn't appear to be strong candidate for an axe murderer,  so I asked him whether he would give us a lift down the road. Bob, the man, and George, the dog, not only said yes, but he offered to drive us further to the start of the next DOC track. Alex and Harriet were keen to go to the camp site they had found so Bob took us down to Helena Bay - saving us 10kms road walking on the legs.
Alex thought that the camp he had found was just over the headland, so off we trudged up the road. The turn off was meant to be in 4.5km, except it wasn't. Alex rang the camp ground and the turn off was 4.5km further along and would take us some distance of trail. At this stage, I was keen to push on for a bit and find a place to camp for the night. The only issue was water which we were low on as we had planned to fillup at the elusive camp. I stopped a council truck to ask them whether there was water further along trail. The fellow said it would likely be few good km before water and then gave us his water bottle to top up. Good karma to him!

We walked on for a bit and found the perfect spot overlooking the valley. Tent's up, dinner, couple of hands of cards before it got too windy and the cards started to blow away.

Not a bad rememberence day and not a bad birthday either!

Pigeon xx
















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