Te Araroa Day 34, Piro Piro to Ongarue

Starting km: 1009
Finishing km: 1053
km covered today: 44

The first day of the Timber Trail had older (not as recently logged) native forest, but the second day had some pretty young forest and some really cool relics of the era (1920s to 1960s) when the area was the heart of NZs logging industry.

This was not surprising, given the name of the trail and that for most of the day it followed the mainline of the old forest railway that had been used to transport logs out of the bush.  These included the ruins of old logging camps, occasional pieces of rails, machinery...
There were also lots of deep railway cuttings, fern and moss-covered and wonderfully cool on a warm and humid afternoon.

Later in the day came the Ongarue spiral, a spiral rail tunnel that had been shored up and turned into part of the trail!

Having had little difficulty with the previous day's 38km, I (and the two other TA trampers who'd stayed at Piro Piro the previous night) decided to finish off the Timber Trail that day.

Good choice! At the Ongarue end of the trail there was a lovely camping spot, complete with shelter and water source that had been constructed by the TA Trust on land donated (and flattened and grassed) by local landowners.

Yvonne and Paul and I were joined at this comfy camp by a pair of lovely American cyclists (who, despite their being older than me, riding touring bikes  and carrying heavy panniers, I was secretly [now not so secretly] delighted to have passed on the trail during the day.

Even later in the day we received one final companion. Leigh, who I'd met at 90 Mile Beach and Pirongia had done an absolutely huge day of 56km to catch up with Yvonne and I after having spent the night in Te Kuiti (meaning that with the 55kms on the beach the day we first met she now had two days of walking longer than my biggest 54km pair!)