Closed Campsites and beer gardens...

Day 11. Strangers Are Great!

Pukehawa to Waingaro.
Daily total: 58.5km Running total: 557km
New top speed: 65.41kmph

A new day a new start. Not optimistic about the journey. Especially after the various breakages of yesterday and the terrible, terrible view. Overcast start and then the drizzle. Drizzle is actually good. Nice and cooling. Everything is tacked away in waterproof bags, who cares? Also, out of phone service. Again, cut off from the outside world.


So terrible, I had to show it again (also no photos from the day. Something needs to fill the space!)

From the hostel, there were no shops or basically anything that I could spend money on. Just hills and farmland. Not a single person, just the odd car passing here and there, until the final few hours where the cars disappeared, even the cows and sheep vanished. I would get the odd waft of them, but never a visual. Just hills, farmland and an empty road to keep me company.

In the final 10km, the knee starts up again. Damn you knee. Don't I give you enough attention? I with you all the time. I take you everywhere I go. Why treat me like this? In the drizzle I see a B&B sign. I stop in their drive, a cheeky notion of knocking on their door to see if I could camp there. Then it comes back to me, I looked at their website and staying there was way, way out of my price league and way to classy to take in strays. Anyways, the campsite was a little bit further. My decision pays off, the campsite, the campsite who responded to my email a few days before has a pub next door with hot food! The dinner the day before was a bowl of plain spaghetti. Dark days followed by happy days.

Get to the campsite in the rain. They are closed! No ifs, no buts. Just closed. They won't budge and let me stay. Disaster! The next closest campsite was 30km away...pub! Beer! Reassessment beer and hot food! Explained my dilemma to the landlord and then joked about camping in the beer garden. The good, good man agreed. This is a proper local pub in the countryside. Mainly farmers and sheep shearers and other country type jobs that us city folk would be confused about.

Ate a hefty amount of food and sat at the back of the pub in the midst of a potatoe mong. Massive gut busting portions. Start chatting to a couple, Grace and Patrick. Turns out they were the owners of the Foxgloves B&B I stopped in the drive of. I told them of me copping out of knocking their door because I saw their classy looking place on the internet. They said that I could stay at their place, Foxgloves B&B was empty that night and that it was pissing it down with rain. They made a very convincing argument! So my night went from a tent in a rainy beer garden to a deluxe room with a king sized bed with more pillows that you could shake a stick at. I ended up leaving all my stuff on the en-suite bathroom floor because I did not want to dirty up the carpet.

The people of Waingaro are amazing. From Lloyd and Mary at the Waingaro Hotel to the locals at the bar to Grace and Patrick at Foxgloves B&B. Thanks so much for all the hospitality. All the pessimism from the day before and that morning had been washed away. Bring on the rest of the trip! 

The view from Foxgloves B&B.

My room for the night. Much nicer than a tent!

A terrible life I lead sometimes.

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