Day 38 - Rakaia River to Lake Selfe, 23.8km, 6 hours 15 minutes

I might be getting spoiled for scenery, but this was a frankly tedious day of road walking.

The highlight of the day was Karen's 2 part breakfast.  I've had a luxury night tucked up off track after Karen and the kids picked me up from the south bank of the Rakaia. I started breakfast with fried new spuds dug from our garden and left over from the excellent slap up meal Karen put on last night. Yum!
Seconds were Easter French toast, somewhat of a tradition in our family. I'd better explain. Years ago when the kids were young we were on our way up to Motueka for Easter, and stopped beside the Motueka River to camp the night. The next morning we realised we hadn't brought anything for breakfast. Nothing for 2 hungry young boys! Scrounging around we came up with a loaf of bread, but alas no fishes, just some eggs and a big bag of those hollow Easter eggs that are pretty meh, but nevertheless not to be touched until Easter Sunday. In desperation we broke this golden rule and broke up the eggs to be used on French toast, as a kind of replacement for maple syrup. Amazing, and now we do it every year. However this year I'll be somewhere around the Nelson Lakes come Easter, so Karen brought it forward. Yum, yum, yum!

Anyway, to the walking. I hadn't put two and two together on this, but starting beside the Coleridge Power Station on the Rakaia River, and then traversing the length of Lake Coleridge during the day was always going to take a steep climb to start with. So the 200 meter climb was a bit of a rude start to the day, albeit climbing through a quite lovely Arboretum.

I've got a soft spot for a decent Arboretum having lived beside one in Kaiapoi. This one was rather more dishevelled and probably the better for it. The climb was accompanied by the caw of numerous magpies. It invoked memories of walking to primary school which, at least in my memory, was always accompanied by magpies. In any case it wasn't long before views of the Rakaia opened out behind and then the deep azure of Lake Coleridge in front.

Then down to the lake for the first of 3 swims for the day - this one rather chilly and cold, probably the coldest of all the lakes so far. With a 10am walking start and a big day of walking ahead keeping the swim to a quick one was probably a good thing though.

So far, so good. But that was only the first 5 or so kilometres and all the rest was on gravel road. What's more, being Sunday the road was hideously busy, with a car every minute or two.  There was a lot of transitioning between the margin and the road.  Most drivers were very considerate and slowed as they passed, receiving a wave of thanks as they did so. A couple weren't quite so great, and would roar past within a coupe of metres at top speed. I refrained from sending a different wave their way.
One very excitable Dutchman pulled his campervan up in the middle of the road, overjoyed at meeting real life Te Araroa walkers, then proceeded to get his wife to take photos. It's all part of the service. I'm still looking for my first offer of a ride though. Not that I'd accept one, but female TAers are apparently offered rides all the time while road walking. Me, not so much. Oh well, at least I can pee pretty much anywhere I want 😀.

There really isn't much at all to say about this section. It was there to be walked, so we walked it.


Mid afternoon and low on energy we stopped for an extended break at the Ryton River for swim, lunch and an hour of badly needed lazing around.

Carrying on, things got slightly prettier as we got to a series of lakes, the pick of which was Lake Selfe. With a name like that it'd be rude not to.

At the far end of the lake we still had another 6km or so of walking to the nominal campsite for the evening at the Harper River.  The campsite was described in the trail notes as 'grim', the highlights being a water tap, a toilet, and a line of pines to camp under. Hmmmmmm. Grim indeed. A high country lake sounded many times better. So Neil and I started looking. The problem is that the lake had many 'no camping' signs and many fishermen patrolling the shores. Our luck was in between Selfe and the next one on, Lake Henrietta - where we found an area that had no 'No Camping' signs.  I'll take that as positive affirmation!

One quite pleasent, but potentially eel filled (lots of weed), lake swim later I had another culinary highlight with some of Karen's Russian fudge with a hot chocolate for dessert.

Finally I leave you with an interesting image - the inside of my sleeping bag. Looks rather womb like to me.