Te Araroa Trail – Timber Trail
We were up early and on the Timber trail by 6.15am today.
It wasn’t quite so hot today – there was plenty of cloud cover which made it pretty humid instead. Anja, Markus and I made good time. We passed through the Ongarue spiral (a feat of engineering back in the day that allowed logging trams to climb in elevation over a relative short distance) and we went over another couple of nice bridges.
Out to Taumarunui
We reached the Bennett Road car park and the end of the Timber trail around 10.30am and had a short rest stop. Owing to the ease of the terrain, the Timber Trail took much less time than expected – 2.5 days and 2 nights in the forest itself.
We began our road walk. There was a Ford Model T car rally going on, so lots of beautiful old cars passed us and gave us a toot and a wave. We later hitched a lift with a local (Rob) who took us into Taumarunui. Upon his recommendation we had a pie and coffee at the Pie-Nui cart (yummy) did a bit of shopping then went to our separate accommodation.
My bed for the next couple of nights is in the Taumarunui Holiday Park, a couple of Kms out of town. I spent all afternoon eating and trying not to fall asleep 😉