Day 15: Helena Bay to Whananaki (24 km, 9.5 hours)

Alex very kindly dropped me back at 6:30am to where I left the trail yesterday afternoon.

The road rose up past Helena Bay, then it was over a stile onto a rough trail through bush, the Helena Ridge track (9km).

Helena Bay early in the morning.

After a gentle start the track started going relentlessly uphill for over 2 hours. Not as extreme as the Raetea Forest, but I was getting exhausted and starting to have Raetea flashbacks. Eventually it reached farmland at the top.

Lovely regenerating native bush. Not so lovely uphills!

Time for an OSM bar after all those hills

Shortly after this I took a wrong turn - the turnoff and the orange trail marker had been hidden by gorse. 500m down the wrong track I realised something was wrong. My TA trail app showed me I was away from the trail, but it still took a while retracing my steps and hunting through the bush to find where it was supposed to be. 

Finally, coming out of the bush.

My 10am pic: a quick water break

Then on to a brief road section, it was time for today’s track number 2: the Morepork-Onekainga (13km). It started off looking like an easy walk - wide flat trail under nice forest, not too many ups and downs. But that was just the Morepork.

Stopping for lunch at the end of the Morepork section.

...and a quick lie down, looking up at the trees.

The Onekainga section however was a totally different beast. Steep uphills and even steeper downhills. Rough footing underfoot. And just when it lulled you into thinking the worst was over, it threw more at you. For a while I was trying to recall Bilbo’s walking song from The Hobbit, but I could only remember the first line: “The road goes ever on...”. Eventually I was too tired to think, apart from grumbles, groans and the odd swear word.. 

The final descent was a mad clamber downhill under the trees, looking for nonexistent footholds, which seemed to go on forever.

More bush! The Onekainga also crossed about 5 shallow streams, but they were easy to rock-jump across.

The view from the top of the Onekainga.

More downhills! Arrrrghh!!

Eventually I staggered out mid-afternoon. It was 1 more hour to get to Whananaki, down a road and then along a track by the estuary. I was exhausted. 

Whananaki was heaving with holidaymakers, but I found a spot for my tent at the Whananaki Holiday Park.

Ahh, a quiet place to set up the tent, perhaps.

The view from my tent door. And this was merely the overflow camping area! Clearly I’m not the only camper in the village.

Time for dinner, and an early night.

Takeaway battle, Ahipara vs Whananaki: 1-1 draw.  Ahipara had better chips, Whananaki had the better burger.

A treat before bed

Today was almost 10 hours of laborious hilly trails, and I’m shattered. I did 44,777 steps today! My feet are sore but my shin didn’t cause me any problems even over all that rough terrain, so it looks to be healing up nicely. I’ll sleep well tonight. As long as all the Whananaki holidaymakers don’t keep me awake...