By Ruth
Distance: 20 km
Today we arrived in Wellington! The day began rather inauspiciously, however. We were looking forward to getting a good coffee and breakfast in the suburb of Porirua – but both of the nice-looking cafes in town were closed for the holiday season. So we had to go to a very mediocre bakery/diner for some eggs and toast.
Afterwards we began the Colonial Knob walk and I was not in the best spirits. Yesterday was a long and tiring day and I was a bit daunted by the day we had ahead, and the thought that we might have a repeat of the difficulties and mood crashes of yesterday. But a break and a second breakfast helped rally my spirits and we continued up to the top of the Knob. This was a walk with many stairs and lots of other people out for a morning walk or run. At the top there was a view back over Porirua and the way we had walked yesterday.
Then we left the day hikers behind and continued along the ridge. It was interesting because suddenly it was like we were back in a rural area, with sheep and cow poops on the track. After that we popped out on a country road, which we weren’t expecting. There were six kilometres of paved road between the Colonial Knob walk and the next track. It was really a country road with horses and sheep on either side.
This wasn’t a great development for me: the pavement was hard on my tired feet, and it was approaching lunchtime with the only option for where we could stop to eat our wraps being the ditch on the side of road. My spirits took a serious hit. There weren’t many cars going by, but on a whim we tried to hitch, and succeeded on the first car! A nice local man drove us all the way to the start of the next track. And after 15 minutes of walking we got to a bench with a great view of the sea and windmills – a perfect lunch spot.
After lunch we continued up and up until we came around the side of a hill and suddenly there was a suburb!
A bit further along and the whole city came into view. It was so exciting to finally see the end of the North Island. Although I was mostly excited to have the end of our walking day in sight.
It started raining as we headed down into the city. I was feeling pretty tired of walking, my feet and ankles were hurting, and I was ready to sit down with a hot drink. Once we finally emerged from the park we made our way to the nearest local cafe only to find that it was closed for the holiday season. We kept walking twenty more minutes in the rain to a different cafe that was open, but it turned out to be a coffee cart at the train station. At that point I was ready to give up and just take the train into town to our hotel. But of course, the trains are also not running at the moment because of the holidays. In our desperation, we ended up taking an Uber for the last few kilometres of our day.
At the hotel I had a nap and a shower and began to feel better. We went to a nice Vietnamese place for dinner and a beer to celebrate making it to Wellington. It was not the note I was hoping to end the North Island on, but we made it.