Today – 27.3km from Telford Camp to Birchwood Station

Total- 2832.6km

Slept like a log and another lazy morning, surprise, surprise. The sun doesn’t rise till alot later these days, and it didn’t come on the tents until after 9am.

Leaving camp late again, around 11am, it was a hot first climb up to the first lookout, where we had a short break enjoying the views down to the water.

Today was a beautiful day, only a few clouds in the sky. Wieke and Oli and Paul headed off with Emeric & I just behind.

Some classic tourist snaps were in order

We walked another 5 or so km on farm tracks, winding our way through the hills. It was really pretty walking, and easy.

I got a vibe that we were off trail, even though we were on a track and pulling up my gps I stopped E who was a little in front and we realised we were about a km off trail.

We’d missed the turnoff, annoyingly, so after some chocolate we headed back towards trail, meeting Oli who had also gone the wrong way. Found the sneaky turnoff and crossed the river.

Emeric is usually a dry feet kind of guy, doing all sorts of rock hopping missions to keep the boots from getting too wet, but it was wet feet time even for him.

We found a sweet lunch spot by the river , I went for a quick swim and then it was tent drying and eating time.

It was cool seeing all the sheep and cows today, very North Island terrain, but less mud.

We saw Myriam, and successfully helped her not make the same mistake we did to go off trail. It was cool to catch up with her as she was a day behind leaving Te Anau.

The day kept on, and feeling lazy we travelled pretty slow, enjoying more breaks as the afternoon wore on.

The terrain changed to farmland ankle rolling territory and unfortunately I rolled an ankle a little, nothing serious.

We have been chatting with all the sheep constantly, and now they even reply to us.

Unfortunately Emeric realised he had left his sunnies at the lunch spot, now 15km behind. Another item lost to the TA. Bugger. This guy has lost a lot of stuff to the TA!

The last bit of the day was frustrating, we were tired but the view was beautiful over a lake with the rolling hills in the background.

We headed out of Mt Linton station and towards the accomodation for the night, Birchwood Station has a cabin for TA hikers and theres about 10 of us here.