April 13th, 2018
by Alex Hallatt
I discovered that Oxford Forest allows dogs, plus the tracks take you through native forest (you can see photos on my other blog) with the sound of bellbirds all around.It had been years since I had done an overnight walk and camp and I consulted my essential tramping list to make sure I didn’t forget anything:
It was a nice short tramp, taking just over an hour to hike to the beautiful Ryde Falls where we camped for the night. The night was cold, but starry and we wore nearly all our layers and shared a lot of red wine (part of Duncan’s essential packing list) to keep warm. Billie retreated to the fleece blanket in the tent.
Billie is much improved after last month’s scare. He is still walking like a drunk and did fall down a small bank on the walk but he was happy and acted like he did on the Coast to Coast, barking at us to get going if we stopped for more than 5 minutes. Which was fine as the sandflies would turn up after that. Maori legend has it that sandflies were created to keep people from being idle and it feels that way when you are tramping.
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