March 18
The Walk - Day 2. Hyde to Middlemarch
It wasn't as cold as yesterday - no ice on the windscreen - but just as misty. Only about 50 metres visibility in either direction. The shuttle arrived slightly early and, with only me on board, we drove slightly faster than I would have liked, to Hyde.
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As I climbed out of the van I was hit by a blast of cold wind. This continued until I was round the first corner, at which point the wind dropped. The cold didn't, however, and for the next couple of hours it was slightly too cold to be comfortable.
There isn't too much to be said about the walk. Today was very similar to yesterday with lots of gravel and lots of straight lines. This section of the Trail had been re-gravelled for the benefit of the cyclists. It meant that a poor pedestrian had very sore feet by the end of the day as the sharply pointed stones bit into them. I remember this sensation from eleven years ago.
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Hyde Station is on the market but it is really a scruffy garden shed with a load of old railway paraphernalia.
Another few kilometres down the Trail is the Hyde Memorial, which is in remembrance of the Hyde Railway disaster of 1943, which killed 21 people, at that time the worst rail disaster in New Zealand history.
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Having stopped to examine it on a previous visit, whilst driving, I contented myself with a quick photo as I walked past.
One of the information boards told me about the original totara mile marker which is alongside the Trail. I passed a couple of old bits of wood but couldn't work out which of them was the important one.
After three hours, I reached Rock and Pillar Station, almost exactly half way along the day's walk, where I stopped for lunch. To date, I had seen very few people. I was exactly on schedule but definitely feeling tired. The weather had warmed up and was now just about perfect.
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The Trail continued very flat and fairly straight to Ngapuna Road, another seven kilometres away. I saw more cyclists but nothing else of major excitement.
The last six point three kilometres is dead straight and dead flat. I had been told that the Roman Catholic church would be visible all the way and it was. Unfortunately, it never seemed to get any closer.
Right: The end is in sight |
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Eventually, it did, as did the bright blue carriages of the old Tranz Alpine train parked in the station. By now, I was very tired and it was a struggle moving one foot in front of the other.
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My feet were very sore but everything else worked pretty well. After six and a quarter hours I sank heavily onto one of the picnic benches at the end of the Trail and reflected upon my achievement. For years I had thought that I would never manage it.
As I was thinking, a youngish lady arrived on a bike with a trailer attached. She dismounted, reached into the trailer and produced a very small baby, with which she proceeded to take lots of selfies, simultaneously explaining to him that he had just completed the Rail Trail in four days. We chatted as she changed his nappy. Both of them appeared to be terrifyingly fit and neither had broken sweat after a huge effort.
I walked the final half a kilometre back to the pub, had a beer, bade farewell to the lady behind the bar - at last she smiled! - and climbed into the car.
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I drove slowly down the road to Dunedin, over lots of hills, finally arriving a little too early for people to be home from work. I parked on the Stuart Street bridge, had a beer at Luna and finally unloaded myself at Pete & Toni's.