Hiking adventures in New Zealand
Hiking adventures in New Zealand
Today I ventured out on a local mission from Stoke in Nelson, exploring some tracks around Marsden Valley and Barnicoat walkway. As I will be living in Stoke on a long house-sit, I wanted to have a wander round and find out about the trails on my doorstep. I started with the Scout track and headed to the top of the Barnicoat range, detoured to Jenkins Hill and made a loop route coming back down the Widdershins track...
The Hakatere Conservation Park is a beautiful area of Canterbury, a couple of hours drive inland from Christchurch. Situated between two mighty rivers, the Rakaia and Rangitata, you'll find a little bit of everything. It has beech forests, open tussock, huge mountains, rivers, lakes and wetland habitats. It is an area of natural importance which harbours a huge variety of native plants and wildlife.
During my...
Today's hike was one of those where we left a lot to chance.
The aim was to head to the Waipakihi hut from Mount Urchin, but were being all spontaneous about it. To be honest we hadn't read up on it much and the weather wasn't being particularly kind to us either. At some point in the past, I had downloaded a gpx file of the routes to Waipakihi hut onto my Backcountry Navigator (topo map app) on my phone, so this acted as our guide.
We...
The track up to the Pinnacles in the Coromandel Forest Park, is one of my favourite local hikes. I usually make it up and back in a day walk of under 6 hours, at a very leisurely pace with at least an hour or so at the top. The Web Creek track starts from the Kaueranga Road end via the Hydro Camp. There are a couple of alternatives – including a return via the Billy Goat Track, which adds an hour or so to the return journey, or you can...
I thru hiked the UK South West Coast Path during June and July 2018. As it turns out I timed my hike to coincide perfectly with the UK's hottest summer on record. The trail took 43 days in total, with a few short days and only 2 full rest days. In all this time I only had a couple of days of rain.
The South West Coast Path is obviously a completely different beast to New Zealand's Te Araroa trail. It is roughly 1000Kms - a third of the distance of Te Araroa trail but with half of the...
Below is my Te Araroa trail gear list, which I've combined a little with my South West Coast path gear list (slight differences between the two). It would be a useful guide for any summer multiday tramping/hiking. You may also want to check out my planning page for Te Araroa trail.