Starting to ramp “things” up,
Saturday morning, but no time to sleep in. Yesterday I walk about 12 official kilometres on the trail and today I have a planned 17km ahead. I parked the car close to where I should end this afternoon and took the bus back to the Parliament buildings, to continue on the trail. Soon I walked past this landmark (<-Not sure if this is the right word) below, dedicated to the Te Araroa trail and an interesting choice of words… “Visit www.teararoa.org.za for more inspiration”.
I actually think that it should say “Walk the Te Araroa for more inspiration, in general”… Soon after I found myself in the old Bolton Street cemetery, a place a wrote about before, when I visited Wellington earlier in May this year. Read more here: Wellington Baby! Walked up the hill this time, but caught a glimpse of the iconic cable car and snapped a photo of the Wellington CBD from the observatory. There is also some nice photos of the botanical gardens, on that other post from May.
After the botanical gardens, it was up and over Tinakori Hill and the Wellington town belt reserve.
Then down (yes, this is the Ta) through Trelissick Park into and through Ngaio before starting the uphill journey again to the Mount Kaukau summit via the Bells Track.
If you look carefully, you can see the South Island in the distance in the photo below… getting a real sense of the trail, where I started.
From the summit of Mount Kaukau I also got the sense that the kilometers are starting to add up and soon I will be out and away from Wellington. Even today I got a sense of more bush and less city.
I took a rest stop here… my feet are starting to feel the trail and it was a nice place with a view to have lunch at. From here it was downhill (mostly) to the end of today’s section. Still feeling okay, but I guess we will see tomorrow about my 22km I have planned.
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41.1606 – 174.8665
23 November 2024
FP-317