The forecast looked terrible, but the sun was shining when we packed up at 7. The holiday park in Waipu Cove is a little off the trail, so we had to hike north a bit to rejoin the trail. I realized there was a trail to the south that connects to the Te Araroa, so we checked it out. Of course it was through private property and we couldn’t take it so we had to hike back. There were a lot of ups and downs and it added a bunch of kilometers to our day.
So the first actual part of the trail was road that winds up the hills then leads to the Langsview track, which was really nice, although it only offered limited views. It was still wet from the rain the night before, but not so wet that it was overly muddy or slippery.
The trail follows some roads for a bit then through farmland to a cliff walk with great views and down to the beach until it gets to Mangawhai Heads where we picked up sushi for lunch nom nom. I’m enjoying all the food hiking through towns, I know it won’t last.
It’s just a 4 km road walk from Mangawhai Heads to Mangawhai, we finally got our first serious rain while hiking, hopefully things will be dried out by morning. We stayed at Mangawhai Traveller’s Rest and they were great about helping us to get our stuff sorted and warm up.
440 km, but we added a few extra with the shortcut so we probably hiked about 33 km.