Pt2 Day 50. Te Kuiti to Mangaokewa Rd North - 11/04/16

Today we ended up doing almost 25km.  Since it was mostly following (broadly) the river I had assumed not too much up and down.  Surprisingly the GPS data shows we still ascended over 600m and descended about 500m during the day!  GPS data for the day is here.

We got underway about 0740 from the motel and headed over the pedestrian rail overbridge onto the main street - heading south out past the famous statue of the shearer (this is Sir David Fagan territory after all!).

Over the railway line.

From the overbridge looking back to the trig that we came past yesterday.

"Decorated" skate bowl.

The old rail station on the main street has been done up and looks great.

...... including some murals.

The 6m tall statue of a shearer at the south end of the main street.

The first part of our long walk up the (mainly) western side of the Mangaokewa River took us behind the industrial area of Te Kuiti - a bit incongruous to be in light bush between the water and industry! Surprisingly perhaps, there was quite a bit of bird life!  It is worth mentioning that, to get there, we also had to pass the Waitete Rugby Club, "home" of two of Te Kuiti's most famous sons - Colin and Stan Meads!

Fairly soon we crossed over the river and up through an old quarry before dropping back down to the river.  After a couple of kms in total (the last km through nice bush) we crossed over on a swingbridge to the Mangaokewa Reserve carpark, back on the western side of the river. From there we were to follow the river upstream for about 20km!

Te Kuiti - famous for shearing and rugby. These boys could do both!!!

Part of the "shrine"!

Walking alongside the river with the industrial area to the right.

Large quarry alongside the walkway.

Looking up the Mangaokewa River as we crossed to the eastern side.

Walking on an old quarry access road above the eastern side of the river.

Astonishing how trees can get a hold in what is essentially a sheer rock face!!

Heading back down toward the river - a school project to brighten up the walk :-)

Then a bit of bush walk before hitting the swingbridge.

Across to the carpark.

One across - one to go. Note the one at a time warning!!

This lady had a campervan parked here. That is her taking her cat (in a harness!) for a walk!!

Playground and toilets at the carpark as well.

Pano showing some of the bush on the eastern side of the river.

Really good info signs that give you some insight into what you are walking through.

The first 2.5km is a well graded track through lovely bush, including some big kahikatea. Beyond that the track came mainly out into farmland. This makes it sound easy - but it was far from that as far as we were concerned. Most of the river edge walking is ungrazed farmland with quite a lot of little blackberry and heaps of Californian thistles - and because of the dew our feet were pretty much the same as walking through a river!  There was also a mix of boggy and stony bits to add to the mix, as well as little bits of bush!  A mixture of a day actually describes it well, in a polite kind of way!!

Interspersed with that were some steep little climbs where you couldn't walk by the river, as well as some dodgy little sidles around rocky faces that could also be wet/muddy and/or covered in long grass. We both found it quite hard going in places, even though there was really not a lot of ups and downs.

The best part of all this walking was the stunning (almost?) virgin bush on the other side of the river for a fair bit of the way. A lot of it had apparently never been logged, and it certainly was impressive (when you found time to look at it!!).  Probably the photos won't do it justice!

Start of the walk through the reserve.

Plenty of potential blockages in the river.

Still in the reserve - nice underfoot.

Old log creating a bit of a weir in the river.

Then we were out of the reserve and heading back down to the river by a swingbridge.

This was the sort of country above us on "our" side of the river.

Stopped for a short break by the swingbridge - sandflies made sure it wasn't too long a stop!!

Pretty!!

Some of the walking was fairly open - but with long grass and cali thistles often! Wet feet most of the day.

We often headed up away from the river for portions of the track.

Bush-clad rock formations on the other side of the river.

Ditto.

Beautiful relatively unspoiled forest on the other side of the river.

Walking conditions varied.

This was up through a boggy bit covered in long grass

Through ferns for a bit of variety.

But often like this along the river itself.

We also went through a short stretch of plantation forestry ......

.... where the landowner had a small campsite. The toilet shovel says "Go far .... dig deep"!!!

Nice views back down to the river from higher up.

Eventually we started to leave the river and came onto a farm track which became a race and then resolved into a road (Mangaokewa North Rd). This joined Mangaokewa Rd after 3.5km, but we stopped 0.5 km short of the intersection at about 1630 as we were pretty knackered and weren't sure how suitable the "bigger" road would be for camping. Our only issue with stopping after 24 km was that this would leave us a longer day of around 34km to Pureora tomorrow but, as it was all on road, we decided it would work OK.

Despite the one-legged stance, this was some of the hardest walking of the day - long grass made it hard to see where you were putting your feet on steep terrain with very narrow "paths"!

This was quite a steep climb up a face from the river.

Me near the top of that particular climb - not always easy to spot the orange markers!!

Local fencing rules apply!! Pretty effective fence all the same!

We did get a little more bush at stages ..........

..... which provided great shade/shelter for these Herefords.

A slightly more mottled bunch!

This is Mangaokewa Rd Nth. We herded this sheep down the road for about a km before it was brave enough to bolt back past us back to its mates!!!

We pitched in a small area by a farm gate - it was close to the road but there were only two houses we had passed so we didn't expect much traffic!  As it turned out, two cars passed us in the dark between about 1900 and 2030 and that was it. The bliss of real, remote, rural NZ!!

Campsite just off the road.

Taken at 6:20 p.m. - getting dark very early now!