A day for digging deep. The only way off the beach is to walk, and the last 30km was tough sledding. 90 mile beach makes the Meseta on the Camino Frances seem like a stroll in the Botanical Gardens.
The kindness of strangers helped. The local fishermen were happy to chat as you passed by. One even called out and brought me over a huge apple, which I savoured slowly for the next couple of km. Then at the campsite in Ahipara, as we were wearily pitching our tents, a neighbouring camper brought over some leftovers as he correctly figured we’d been surviving on dehydrated food. The plate of bbq lamb ribs and kumara mash was divine! Between that and two cans of an L&P sugar fix and I felt almost human again. (L&P is a flavour of pop unique to NZ, although I suspect it is now owned by the Coca-Cola folks).
Very happy to bid farewell to the beach!
The last of the 90,000 or so footprints I left on the beachBlister prevention fails, Ahipara. The tape stuck to my skin better than my skin was stuck to me.
In 2009, we embarked on a one-year family sailing adventure aboard a Grand Soleil 39, "SV Mulan". Our original sailing blog is linked on this site.
In 2017, Susan, Andrew, Sam & Max walked the Camino Frances from St-Jean-Pied-de-Porte to Santiago de Compostella (and rode bikes from Burgos to Leon as a blister recovery strategy), and in 2018 Jack also joined the crew as we waled the northern section of the Camino Portuguese from Porto to S de C.
In 2019 Andrew, accompanied by Max for the first few hundred kms, and Susan for the Tiscan section, walked the via francigena from Canterbury to Rome. That journey is blogged in this site.
This blog is planned as an alternative to the endless instagram posts used previously to communicate with those interested in our travels - although there is a linked instagram account as well!
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2saunter 
Ouch! Cool pic of your footprints. Happy Trails.
Cheers
Jamie
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