Te Araroa Trail – Fishers Track
We enjoyed a leisurely morning today. Our little group left National Park at 7.30am and headed off down Fishers track. The track is a part of a network of mountain bike tracks which make up the Mountain to Sea Cycle Trail. These go from Ohakune and National Park via tracks, rural roads and/or the Whanganui river to Whanganui.
The whole day was a delight! Mostly because it was cloudy in the morning and the track was nearly all downhill from an elevation of 800m to 120m. The track passed through lovely hilly forest, bushland and farmland. We only saw a few bikes and a couple of cars all day. We and had a couple of leisurely stops & a longer lunch break today too.
Oio Road Junction
We got to the Oio rd junction after 28kms at around 2.15pm. At the junction was a toilet, water tap and a nice flat grassy area.. so we made camp. Also at the junction is a WWI and II war memorial and board documenting the history of the memorial and of the Kaitieke area which was a booming little business centre in the 1920’s.
As we set up camp the sun came out so we did our best to avoid it with very little shade, for the rest of the afternoon. We met one more group of mountain bikers, but other than that had the entire place to ourselves all afternoon. Anouck and I darned the mesh top part of her trail runners/shoes (they have to survive until Palmerston North). Everyone has some little niggles with some part of their their gear now, as we’re at the +1200km mark.
The thunder drove us into our tents at 5pm for dinner.. rehydrated spag bol (amazing) followed by tea and Griffins ginger nut biscuits.. which are now ‘the’ TA biscuit of choice, thanks to Anouck. They are unbreakable in our packs. We all eat about 5 a day.
It’s amazing being in the tiny tent in a storm – we all love it, except I only just realised I pitched my tent close to the tall metal flag pole at the memorial…