Days 30 and 31
- john51648
- Nov 3, 2020
- 5 min read
Day 30 ( 26 October)
Ramarama to Mercer (28km)
Well today I am finally out of Auckland and hopefully onto a slightly quieter, and perhaps cooler experience. Yesterday walking from the Airport to Ramarama was tortuously hot! I must say however I’m starting to get pretty excited about hitting Hamilton again and being with Marie and family for a couple of days
At the Ramarama camp I meet up again with Alan (aka Alex from Takapuna) so it’s good to have a trail mate again for a few days. I realised I hadn’t actually walked with anyone since Whananaki which is about two weeks ago, it really demonstrates how quiet the TA is without any foreigners.
We left the camp at about 7.30, again a bit early in the hope of getting a reasonable distance under our belts before it got too hot.
The walk today is essentially mainly road,with a little bit of farm, over the Bombay Hills and on to Mercer. Interestingly by road Ramarama to Mercer is about 18km and the TA 28km.
The walk was pretty mundane, up and down, until we came to SH2 which first we had to cross then walk alongside. Given it is the end of a holiday weekend not the most desirable place to be on foot.
We managed to get across ok, albeit running, then walked about 500m until a very narrow bridge that you really didn’t want to be on with a car coming towards you. After waiting a while I spotted a gap and ran across, Alan didn’t follow me but only about ten cars later there was an enormous gap and he was able to wander across without any concern.
After the bridge the local farmer has created an alternative route through his farm, (perhaps tired of TA roadkill outside his gate!?) which got us off SH2. For those reading this not from NZ SH2 is one of the most dangerous pieces of road in the country and that’s when your driving, frankly walking alongside it is plain dumb!
Anyway having survived our brief walk on the highway we then followed the farm roads to a stop bank at the south of the farm. We had to come down off the stop bank and cross the stream before following the south stop bank.
Now the way across was walking on two power poles that had been laid across and were sitting at about exactly the water level. So in theory it was possible to do and keep dry feet.
Alan started first but has the disadvantage of only having one eye which made balancing extremely difficult for him. He decided to remove shoes and wade across hoping it want to deep.
I decided I’d treat it a bit like a Romanian gymnast on the beam and just walk across gracefully. All went bloody well and graceful, I would venture to say, until I got to the bit where the two poles intersected. Unfortunately I put a foot between them which sunk down to my knee (this being wider than the gap). So after extracting myself I’d call it a 50% successful crossing as only one wet shoe and leg!
Alan meanwhile waded across in bare feet and has no wet shoes!
The trail then followed the stop banks to close to SH1 where e did a bit more road walking and confronted by the options of a trail closed sign or crossing SH1 decided to ignore the closure sign.
Then a shot walk to Mercer where I had the first Maccas of the trip for a late lunch.
Camping tight on a bit of grass out the back of the Mercer Motel (which appears deserted) between the expressway and the Waikato River.
Date 31 (27 October)
Mercer to Rangiriri (26km)
Well that day was a surprise, and not a good one!
Not the best of sleeps, being close to SH1 and the rail line in Mercer even with my deafness it was hard to sleep. Also my current sleeping bag seems to be exacerbating the leg issue as I need to sleep on my back so despite spending 11 hours in the tent probably only got half that much sleep, bugger!
Wandered over to the Pokeno bacon shop for breakfast and ordered bacon and eggs. Big mistake, got two eggs, good, and about half a kilo of pretty fatty bacon which I unfortunately devoured most of. So left feeling a bit unwell with stomach saying I had been abusive.
The walk from Mercer looked on the map like a bit of road, followed by a short tramping track following which the route was along the river using farm tracks to Rangiriri.
The bit of road to start was correct but that’s about all. The track was terrible, thigh deep wet grass and no Track as such so you had to just post through it. The first 3 km took well over an hour so not looking good for an easy short day.
Eventually the “track” came back off the hillside and returned to the level of the main road. At this point we made a navigational error and hared up another track towards lookout. This proved to be an unfortunate diversion as it was both steep and quite a long way. We realised we’d gone wrong at almost the top so I continued on and at least got a reasonable photo from the lookout.
Understandable we got it wrong the correct track crossed a spillway then deteriorated to a rock retaining section with blackberry and grass and then under SH1. Unfortunately when they built this trampers must have been shorter as the head room was only 4ft or so hence requiring a sort of spider walk using hands on the ground to ensure your pack cleared the support structure. All the while trucks and cars rumbling overhead!
Once on the other side of the highway the track followed the river but there was really no track. It was long grass, eroded river banks and overgrown trees that made it very slow and hard going.
We did move off the river bank into the adjacent farm a few times but it would seem the farmer is a bull farmer who also does no gate maintenance. Hence requiring the climbing over numerous fences( while avoiding the electric wires) and moving back to the river bank whenever a paddock had bulls in it. Call me a wimp but these were mean looking bulls!
Finally came to the end of the farmland/river bank and the trail follows country roads to Rangiriri.
By the time we got to the road it was hot and sunny and, frankly, we were over the day but trudged on and we’re rewarded with the Rangiriri Hotel appearing ahead.
Decided to stay at the hotel as a reward for the tough day! The Rangiriri Hotel is another of those oldie worldy hotels that exudes character and history. The last time I can remember having a beer at Rangiriri was when returning from a school trip to Huntly power station in my 7th form at college (in my 1961 VW). That was 1978 so a long time between drinks! That previous occasion required a group of us to explain to the headmaster our actions, fortunately no such consequences this time!
On reflection this was not the longest, nor the most arduous day to date but for some reason I’ll remember it as the least enjoyable. It really was just a miserable day, largely because the track was non existent, there seemed to be innumerable fences to climb, mean bulls and it was bloody hot and sunny.
One Bull said to the other two....."shall we have dinner now or watch a mooovie"