Day 4 Mangaokawa to Pureora 28km (walked)

If u have ever driven to Bennydale u would have seen alot of goats. Well now I know why, u need to be a goat to get through. Mud, gorse, blackberry, thistles and cutty grass. Not to mention the trail at most times was the width of one foot with a steep drop straight down. I fell once and managed to grab a tree so didn’t go down far.
Spirits were waning as Carmen and I perservered with what seemed like a senseless track (you could hardly call it a trail) we got off trail a number of times due to lack of or no markers. Once scaling up a paddock face at what felt like a 45 degree angle, slow going as we couldn’t afford to make a wrong move. Stopped for lunch at 2pm we had only done 10km, this info wasn’t helping. Oh well, hot couscous and tuna and Carmen’s wine gums helped us get the last 6km done to the road. 4.30 we popped out on road thinking bugger it we will hitch to water source and camp. We picked the only road in King Country with no cars on it Mangaokawa North Rd….. 29km later we were not saying a word just trying to get to main Rd n water source. Hallilula a ute, we got picked up and dropped at start of Timber Trail. We were stoked. Found a tap, scrubbed our legs n feet and crawled in our tents (literally)