Day 133 - burnt socks
Telford campsite —-> Birchwood station 28km
I overslept this morning for the first time on trail. I must have snoozed all twelve alarms I’d put on and when I checked my phone it was 7am. We’d planned to leave at 7.30am and my tent pack down / brekkie routine typically took 90minutes - oops.
Our campsite had been pretty sheltered overnight and there was a heap of moisture in the air so my tent was soaking - it added a lovely couple extra kilos to my pack weight.
Leon headed out as I was packing up and John and I left just after 8am. It was a very misty morning and we didn’t see much of any Linton station as we trekked over the 4WD tracks of NZ’s largest farm station. We’d be walking for almost 30km today entirely across their land.
This very wooly sheep looked a little lost… and like it had been lost for quite a long time - felt like a common occurrence out here with the cow we’d seen the other day.
As the mist cleared mid-morning, we could just about make out the ocean again from the tops of the farm.
We caught up to Leon just before lunch and as the sun came out we lay down in the grass, soaking up the sun and laying out all our gear to dry. I loved having a slightly lighter pack every day just after lunch but with a dry tent, I’d be a whole new person.
The afternoon took us through more of Linton station, but it was much more active than the morning, more like walking through an actual farm. A heap of cows to avoid, a heap of sheep avoiding us and a fair bit of bashing through livestock crop.
We left Mt Linton station around 3pm and walked for another hour or so to reach the edge of Birchwood station, where the owners wonderfully offer up an old musterer’s cabin for TA walkers. A dorm, a kitchen and best of all - a hot shower. Inside, with the fire already going, was Ian! I’d suddenly gone from not meeting any other hikers all month, to meeting two hikers in two days.
I showered, washed some clothes and put my socks on the stove to dry out. Mid chat with Ian & Leon, Ian stopped and asked if we could smell burning plastic… oh god. My socks!
Lesson learnt - don’t leave stocks on the fire … they burn apparently…!
The local pub does pick ups from the station, so at 6pm we were picked up in a minivan and taken to Takitumu Tavern for pizza and beer. Oh how wonderful to be out and about in the real world.
We were being driven back around 9pm but it felt like midnight… all four of us pretty much fell asleep on the drive back, it was long past our hiker bedtimes…
