Saturday - going over the Takanue saddle and on to Kerikeri by Joanna

 Saturday saw us up bright and early and taking a 45 minute drive to our first walk. There was scant information about this online, including the length of the walk, but Jenny was sure she had seen that it was about 2 hours, before this information was deleted from the site.

Undeterred we set off up the track to go over the saddle. We briefly encountered an eccentric man who lives nearby but managed to extricate ourselves before getting too involved in any conversations and skipped over the first stream of many on this track. 

The path was mostly excellent. It is a 4wd track, so we were ususally able to walk side by side. There was plenty of evidence of the late cyclone, but also evidence of the clearing up that has been done. One large slip was cleared off the track, and another we clambered over. There was a pretty little waterfall on one side and our sensed were delighted by the wild ginger and honeysuckle alongside the track. We didn't see or hear many birds though Jenny saw a grey warbler and we found some keruru feathers.  Otherwise it was just the cicadas that accompanied us with their music through ther tree fern, rimu and totara lined pathways.

We met Ross on the other side, after crossing a knee deep river and meandering along the path for another km or so, and then we stopped off for coffees and pies and sat on an old bench outside the local store. 

Feeling very impressed with ourselves we decided we could easily do the 2 km track through farmland and inside a forest track down towards Kerikeri. How wrong we were. 

The track very quickly became overgrown and hard to follow. It followed a fence line, with numerous signage to not cross the farmlands. This became more and more tempting as the grass grew to shoulder height on our side and the ground became boggier and boggier until it was sucking on our boots.  There were 2 feet holes which Bruce as our bushwacker found for us, and Christine also found a few extras and disappeared from view. Every step was an effort.  We had renewed appreciation for the term "Staying on the beaten track" as this was clearly not beaten. Moving out of the shoulder high grass, and boggy ground we were soon embraced by the gorse on both sides. I have uploaded a photo which just looks like grass, but if you zoom in you can see Jenny there. This gives you an idea of how most of the "track" was. 

We descended into the forest track which was a lot clearer, and was accompanied by the scent of male goats and the evidence of their presence, Still, this wasn't for long and soon we were in a beautfiul native forest, with punga, totara and manuka trees, plus evidence of pheasants and peacocks in the vicinity. 

The final 5 km of this 2 km track, which was in fact 7 km, was more gorse, more shoulder height grass, and finally an overgrowth of blackberry and ivy. Every step was treacherous. If this track isn't maintained within the next couple of weeks only the fittest machete wielding hikers will be able to navigate this section. 

Jenny and Gordon both came off second best from a run in with the blackberry, and all of us were relieved to be finishing this very tiring walk. 

We walked a total of 27000 steps or 19km today. 

We are now esconced at a lovely lodge in Kerikeri, where we will be staying for the next 3 days.  It is in an orange grove.