Day 119. Where did the warm weather go?  February 29, 2016.

39 km

Struan Flat Rd km 2841 to the start of the Longwood Forest Track km 2880

Lindsay and Allison drove me the 90 minutes back to where they picked me up. I started walking about 8am.

Today’s walk had some of everything….farm tracks, paved road, gravel road, 4 wheel drive road, forest track.

Some of the farm track was frustrating once again as I searched for orange poles. The GPS track didn’t match the orange poles on the ground. I got to several dead ends at electric fences I couldn’t climb over. So I walked in circles and backtracked.

I walked half way up this hill on the wrong side of the fence. Then back down and up again. Grrrr.

Where did the warm weather go? Today was so much colder with a southerly wind. The wind was nothing like a couple of days ago but it was much colder. It rained off and on. It could have been worse. It didn’t rain in the most exposed areas.

I caught up to Alex and Helen when they were stopped for lunch. I knew they would be out here because we texted yesterday. I’ve seen them a couple times on the South Island but we haven’t walked together since Christmas. We had lots to catch up on.

Fun fungi

We wanted to get as far as possible today. There wasnt any obvious place to camp from reading the trail notes or map. At the end of the day we walked on a 4 wheel drive road thru a very dense forest. There was no where to camp until a small clearing where the road ended and trail started. There was one tent here with Paolo from Italy. It started to rain so I quickly set up my tent and jumped inside.