Reflecting the rain of the previous day, we elected to walk up into Belmont Regional Park from Hill Road, today. Hill Road inside the park has a good smooth and hard gravel surface, which meant “no mud”. That was welcomed. We set off under grey skies from the park gate. As this is the lambing season, side-tracks leading off Hill Road were closed. On the positive side, most ewes we saw had lambs at foot. They were gambolling around what one might call “Wellington Daffodils”, the prickly kind, aka “gorse”. One hardy old ewe had got out onto the road with her two lambs and in her efforts to get away from us when we came round the corner, eventually ran straight at us, with her lambs in tow. A swift sideways step, and peace descended.
We had one or two other adventures this time round. Rob was at the back and stopped to tie up a boot lace. Behind him he heard an emphatic “moo”, then another. He finished tying up the lace and slowly rose to turn round. There was a farmer driving a small group of cows and calves – Whew! It was easy to step aside and let them past.
Next, we spotted a timely loo sign, a public asset not to be passed lightly. Some took advantage of it. Unfortunately, the last user was accidentally locked in and had to bang on the window to attract a rescuer!
When we got up on top of the plateau the wind was buffeting and unpleasant, so rather than battling on in those conditions, we turned around after about 2.3 km, to return to our cars at the park gate. Overall, a good outing that definitely was one to blow the cobwebs away. The consensus was that next week, we walk up the Karapoti Gorge track in the north of Upper Hutt.
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- pausing for a snack at a John Bunyanesque firewood pile