Day 32 - sticky cows
Mercer —-> Rangiriri 25km
Awoken by truckers speeding along the highway early doors, I was on the trail by 7.30am. I left the motel garden and immediately hit some of the worst trail I’d encountered so far. After following the track around the back of someone’s house, any sign of a proper trail faded away. The orange markers were particularly hard to follow, blocked out by the long grass I had to bush bash through - if I thought I was sticky after Kerikeri, this was a whole new level. I was a walking glue stick.
The “trail” offered me some reprieve when it replaced the grass for bog - with water up to my knees I could momentarily wash the stickiness away before being stickied back up again in the next field.
Finally out of farmland, I followed a stopbank alongside the Waikato river and then the highway for a few km - this first day on my own was really pulling out all the stops. It was sweltering hot and the trucks rushing past at 100km/hr were pretty depressing.
Before long I was back in the fields but now faced a new issue - cows. I’m fine being in a field with cows as long as they are far away from me. The first paddock I came to, the cows were spread out in a line blocking my path.
I was already feeling grumpy after the grossness of the morning and didn’t feel like playing cowboy. I climbed over a fence into the next field and tip toed along the edge, hopping over corn and apologising to the farmer under my breath. I climbed back into the cow paddock once I was far enough away for them to realise I was there.
After another hour of farmland the same thing happened again. All the cows were together, hiding from the sun around the shaded path. Once again I hopped over the fence (helped by the many fallen trees that pushed this fence to the ground) and walked on the outside of the field along the riverbank. However moments after I was over I realised that there was also a cow on this side! A calf had managed to get himself stuck on the wrong side of the electric fence - probably why all the other cows were hanging out in my path…
Spooked by my appearance, the calf tried to jump back over, but kept getting shocked by the fence. It ran as far as it could before a tree branch blocked its path and then stood frozen, I was now blocking his path the other way. I winced my way around it very slowly and carried along into the next field. Luckily the farmer was headed towards me in her golf buggy so I told her about the calf. She sighed a very deep sigh - it was clearly not the first time it had happened.
I carried on for the next few hours alongside the river, attempting to follow whatever trail I could see, but most of the time I made the trail myself.
The local community had installed a water tap for TA walkers at the river pump house where I was planning to stop for lunch. Rather than a drink, I pretty much had a shower to rid me of the stick and muck I was covered in. I sat in the shade of the pumphouse, had my lunch and looked at the afternoon’s walk. It was supposed to be along the river through the fields again, but I realised that the road also follows the river. I wasn’t going to put myself through that turmoil again when I could just walk on the tarmac. 9km and 2 hours later I walked into Rangariri.
My campsite for the night was at the home of a wonderful trail angel called Cathy. A long-time TA supporter, she was famous on trail for serving up her award- winning pies to walkers. I went for the beef cheek and cheese. Oh my word. Heavenly.
Rangiriri was another town that unfortunately had the state highway plonked right on top of it, so my ear plugs came in pretty handy again to shut out the noise of the traffic as I turned in for the night, ready to put that nightmare of a day behind me.
