Pt4 Day 20. Feilding to Turitea Rd - 26/11/2016

Grant dropped us off at the Aorangi/South St intersection at 0800. Our plan was to try and get to Old West Rd - in fact we got a bit further up Turitea Rd, covering over 31km. Today's GPS track is here:
https://www.movescount.com/moves/move132405270

The walk to Bunnythorpe was not too bad although there was a bit of traffic around on a Saturday morning. From Bunnythorpe the TA manages to stay off Railway Rd, which is nice. We were on the other side of the rail line on a small gravel road, followed by a grassy stretch which we assume was railways reserve land. This came out onto Roberts Line where we turned left and basically followed this for about 5km, across SH3, all the way to the banks of the Manawatu River.

Just after setting off. Who has no pack on today?? :-)

Walking down Campbell Rd towards Bunnythorpe - not too much traffic, and some nice grass verges in places.

And, to our right, the trains!

We saw a few of the mini silage bales - I hadn't seen them before but, like small hay bales, I guess they make sense for smaller lifestyle blocks.

This herd all had individual RF transponders around their necks - looked a bit like Swiss cow bells!

Close up.

This is where we discovered we had a short cross-country stretch parallel to Railway Rd.

There were even stiles and drains to cross!

And plenty of longer wet grass to walk through.

Cattle to walk past on the way.

Under the flight path for PN airport along Roberts Line.

Into PN suburbia across Kelvin Grove Rd.

Start of the Manawatu River Walkway at the end of Roberts Line. River is just behind the trees in the background.

Here we joined the river walkway, which is a good sealed path (with lots of grass alongside for TAers to walk on!), for several kms to the Fitzherbert Bridge. By now the showers were coming and going which, with a brisk NW wind, made for not so pleasant walking. We found a big oak tree to shelter under for some lunch while a pesky shower passed!

Off along the river.

We found the odd shortcut off the asphalt pathway.

The trees on the right for a lot of the way helped a little to protect us from the NW wind.

Earthworks on the cliffs beneath Porkchop Hill to try and prevent further erosion on the bend in the river.

Lunch stop selfie under the oak tree. You can see the path is quite wet in the background.

Then we were across the bridge and out to the Massey University campus. I had expected we would walk through the campus but, in fact, we walked a track to the NE of the campus. We did get views down onto the campus but skirted it completely. We did the see the plot of land I used for my research trials for my thesis though!!

Franziska and me heading over the Fitzherbert Bridge towards Massey University.

Entering Bledisloe Park next to the entrance to Massey.

Some little ups and downs through this walkway.

Easy walking through light bush.

Franziska in a little redwood grove.

Looking down on part of the Massey campus.

More views onto the back end of the campus near Old West Rd.

Who is still happy to not have a pack today!?! :-)

We arrived out on Old West Road. As we were charging along, we decided we could do some more of Turitea Rd in order to shorten the two days we would have to do next to get out at Levin. I rang Grant to give him a pick up spot and an ETA. As we set off, the rain got a bit heavier so we made a dash for some tree shelter where Belinda got her poncho out for Franziska to keep her a bit drier and warmer!

We made it about 4.5 km up the road, where we found a spot where Grant could pull off the road, and decided to stop. Our timing was impeccable as he pulled up about 5 mins later!! It's fantastic to be able to rely on family to run around after you - it makes hiking/tramping life a lot more luxurious at times! We went back via Ashurst and took a small detour to the carpark at the western end of the Manawatu Gorge so that Franziska could see how the river flows through between the Tararua and Ruahine Ranges from the east coast to the west! Then it was back to Feilding for a hot shower, after which we all headed out to town for dinner.

The poncho came in handy!

Walking up Turitea Rd.

There was a detour of the road for a bit here - it meant we got very wet feet!!

But we got back on the road again for the last km or so. And we came across a couple of grey horses on each side of the road here, so Belinda was happy :-)