Day 19 - rain
Ruakaka —> Camp Waipu Cove 18km
This would be the first real test of our rain gear. Would the obscene cost of Josh’s Arcteryx jacket be worth it? Would bringing rain pants be a pointless addition in grams?
We had a short day to test it - 18km on the flat, we wanted to be out of the rain by lunch. We started out along the beach, it went by pretty quickly and I naively didn’t think it was raining that much, but soon realised, it was pouring - the wind had changed direction and it was now coming at me front on. By the time we were off the beach I was soaked through, my trousers and my jacket had already wetted out. Josh annoyingly seemed to be okay…
We took shelter in Waipu and headed to Logan MacLean for a coffee and a snack. The best cheese scones I’ve ever had and the coffee was free for TA walkers - whooo! Waipu was a Scottish town… all the stores were “Mcs” or “Macs” and all the street signs were tartan. Waipu museum was just across the street and had we not been dripping from head to toe, we might have stopped in to see how the town had become, and stayed so Scottish.
The rest of the trail into Waipu Cove was on a half completed cycle path alongside the very busy Cove Road. The bits of the path that were completed were wonderful, providing shelter from the rain and a chance to avoid the cars. The bits that weren’t, were horrendous. Maybe the sketchiest bits of road we’d walked to date. We turned up at Waipu Cove just after 1pm feeling very over it and looking like drowned cats.
The team at Waipu holiday park, wonderfully tried to do the same as the Ruakaka team the previous night and find us a sheltered spot. However as good as their intentions were, we were put in the most exposed site in the whole park. When putting our tent up in the wind, our tent pole broke… great! Massive call out to Dan Becker and his YT channel here - for I would not have known how to temporarily fix a broken tent pole had it not been for him! (It’s the tube not that comes in all tent bags that I always normally throw away…).
We moved our tent to somewhere with a little more shelter as everyone else in the park seemed to be bailing. We hung out in the TV room to keep our stuff dry and then headed over to The Cove bar and restaurant for a bevy and some dinner. We hung out there for as long as they’d let us keep a table and then begrudgingly headed back to the campsite.
The patch on my air mattress had been a failure and last night I’d ended up on the floor again, so I decided to sleep in the TV room and leave Josh to fend for himself in the tent. Whilst he moaned about how loud the wind (and the possums) were, I know secretly he loved having all the extra room…
