Stratford to Maketawa Hut

 


Wore a wool top as I left Stratford on Pembroke Road to walk about 10km uphill to my first stop, Stratford Mountain House. Never having been there before I had no preconception but a sign saying cafe open 9-late kept my spirits high as the road got steeper.


Rural activism is a thing, I'm learning. This time I think a farmer is being accused of breaking up families and killing babies when he or she sends bobby calves away.


After a while, I met the Egmont National Park boundary and just concentrated on the incline. Plus, I mentally sorted through all possible breakfasts and decided coffee and eggs would be the ticket. I reminisced about walking in Netherlands where every track leads to coffee or my Roman road hikes in UK which always ended in a snug pub, or do I mean pub snug.

So at 0856hrs I sat on an outside chair in mild rain, tummy rumbling and quip ready for when staff opened the Mountain House. At 0902hrs I decided to storm the ramparts, or anyway the front door. Removed my boots, found my mask and only then noticed something.


You're in the leisure business and you close during vacation season? Amateurs.

Ate my oat bar, drank my water, found the track I needed for Maketawa Hut. Instant change of pace from 4 km/hr to probably 1 km/hr. Painstaking hard travel on a dreadful slippery overgrown track, in constant fear of slipping and breaking a bone. Long steel ladders and skinny mossy bridges.


This was the only nice bit. And there were Ourisia,



and an amazing fungus (pole handles for scale).

About halfway along I met a man going the other way, training for his next section hike on Te Araroa. He is from Sneek, so was my grandfather, lots to excitedly share. Warned me, rats at the hut.


This is Mangamawhete Stream, I loved the mountain cabbage trees on the true right.


The track disappears under thick vegetation from here on so I used the poles to sound the way.


Yay, orchids. Pterostylis, at the end of flowering.


And, at last, Maketawa Stream, about 20 bad minutes from the hut. Reached the hut 3.5 hours from the track start, and 6.5 hrs from town.  

Coffee, etc.


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