Te Araroa Day 46, Whanganui to Bulls

Starting km: 1403
Finishing km: 1465
km covered today: 62(I really should stop putting exclamation points here, but I think this really deserves one!)

This was my first day of real walking since before starting the canoe trip.  It was also my first day on the trail alone in almost two weeks.

Most of my really long days of walking aren't really the result of planning, but of just walking out the door (whether of tent or building) in the morning and seeing how the day goes.

This one started poorly, with 20km of walking along the verge of State Highway 3.  A lot of TA walkers hitchike, bus or otherwise skip this section. And I can't say that I blame them.  It's long, busy and while I never really felt in danger, the verge in some sections is narrow enough to be uncomfortable.  There may be worse sections of road walking on TA, but convincing me so is going to be a tough task.  (It wasn't all, 100% bad.  The rose garden below was just randomly on the road about 15km out of town.)

Fortunately after four hours on SH3, the trail switched on to some nice quiet country road to arrive at what I think may be the last section of beach walking on the trail until Bluff.  I'd actually planned to stop at the nice little campsite at the start of the beach.  But it was just noon, and Louis (sp?) a fellow walker from the Whanganui hostel (and who I'd previously met at Pahautea hut on Pirongia) was there and planning to carry on to another spot at the end of the beach, so I decided I might as well.

The beach walk was great, and doing it barefoot allowed the waves to refresh my feet as well.

When I arrived at the end of the beach, some 7km later I'd decided I felt like a bit more walking.

This was slightly problematic, as there wasn't really anywhere to camp until the town of Bulls, some 30km further on.  And the next actually nice place to camp wasn't until the Mt. Lees Reserve, another 8km after that.  But I decided to give it a go.  It would prove I hadn't forgotten how to walk while in the canoe.  And almost all the day's walking had been (and would be) dead flat.  If there was ever a day when I'd break the 60 (or even 70) kilometre mark, this would be it. 

From the end of the beach it was about 5km of forestry road, then back country roads all the way to Bulls.  I told myself that if I made it there before 21:00 I'd carry on to Mt. Lees and make it 70km for the day.

I arrived at 21:07. My feet were hurting a fair bit by then, so I was pretty happy to be able to drag myself into the holiday park, arrange for a tent site, quickly make my dinner, throw the tent up and collapse into it to sleep.