Hitting the trail with Queen Charlotte

Day 4-5: the big day and the subsequent reward

Ok, so todays walk ( the third day of the walk) is affectionately known as “the big day”. You walk for about 8 hours and cover a distance of around 23 kms. It’s exhilarating because most of the walk is along the ridge line between Queen Charlotte Sound and Kenepuru Sounds, and on a good day you can see across the Cook Strait to the north island. Of course to get to the ridge line, there are a number of very steep up sections, and wherever there’s a steep up, there’s a steep down. ( You realise how slow time goes when you are going up for 40 minutes……our group – more about them later – broke the entire track into 48 x 10 minute segments so that we could count off segments and feel that progress was being made!!!)

We didn’t quite get the stunning sunny and clear day. It started very misty with light rain, on and off for most of the morning but scenery was still magnificent

First “cuppa” stop of the day was about 3 hours into the walk at the Bay of Many Coves. ( you can see why it’s called bay of many coves!) A cuppa never tasted so good!

After another couple of hours, the next stop was Black Rock shelter – very excited as we were now down to only 9 x 10 minute segments !!! From here you could get glimpses of Picton.

Because of all the rain, the track was really muddy and slippery in parts. The slippery downward parts were particularly challenging but not one of our group took a dive! Extent of muddiness can be seen in my boots!

We reached our accommodation just 1 segment short of the 48x 10. I made it!

The group I have been travelling with are all really nice…a couple of academics ( and their kids), a cyber IT expert, a science teacher, a hardware retailer and a retired accountant turned artist. I was the slowest but they continually offered me encouragement!!

Thank goodness we have a rest day.