Day 80 - moo shall not pass
Havelock —-> Pelorus Bridge Campground 21km
The usual Marlborough blue sky was back this morning and we set off towards Pelorus bridge around 9.30am. Josh had successfully purchased some new camp pants from one of the only two shops in Havelock.
It was a 14km road walk up to Daltons Bridge, but the roads were fairly flat, devoid of cars and the views across the sound and the surrounding countryside were stunning.
We pulled out our chairs at Dalton’s Bridge and started to make lunch. Within ten seconds hundreds* of cows descended on the fence nearest to where we were sitting. Clearly we were far more interesting than the grass they were munching on.
More cows kept coming as if summoned to their weekly meeting. They moved closer to the fence, packing in more tightly as more wandered over. It was pretty amusing at first until we realised that we were supposed to be walking through that field… yeah, nah.
With no other way around, we walked down the private farm road waving our imaginary white flag hoping no farmer would appear with their shotgun. A woman ran out from a house within five minutes telling us off for walking down the road, ushering us back towards the field. We explained about the cows and she nonchalantly told us we could just shoo them out of the way. Again, yeah, nah. She relented and kindly let us walk through her yard into the field from the other end, well away from the swarm of cows and back onto the track. I thought I’d left all cow fiascos on the north island… weren’t we supposed to be in the wilderness now?!
The rest of the afternoon was spent trudging across farmland, the sun beaming down on us, little wind to keep us cool.
We crossed over the beautiful Rai river just before arriving into Pelorus Bridge.
We showed up just in time to buy a couple of ice creams before the campsite cafe closed and we sat down outside next to another group of hikers. They were NOBOs and had just that afternoon finished the Richmond Ranges section. They’d said it had been amazing, better than anything they’d expected but it had drained everything from them. They looked as if it was all they could do to stop themselves falling asleep at the table…
We finished our ice creams, picked up our food resupply box from the camp reception and headed off to set our tent up down at the campsite. We spent the evening reorganising our packs with the ten days worth of food we had sent ahead and tried to get the image of the exhausted NOBOs out of our minds… We’d head into The Richmond Ranges (via the Pelorus River track) tomorrow. Were we ready to tackle arguably the hardest section of the entire TA?!
Bring it.
*I know hundreds sounds like an exaggeration but it’s honestly not. There were about 300, if not 400 cows in the field.
