Sole-Destroying

DH doesn't usually have a lot of input into my blog (apart from asking me not to include photos of him - which requests I sometimes ignore) but yesterday he offered a suggestion for the title, and I decided to humour him. (It will probably be the one and only time ever!)

Yesterday, as part of a have-wanted-to-do-this-for-awhile, let's-make-it-a-celebration, we-can-do-this-with-Son#1-and-family, we decided to walk the Old Coach Road that is part of the Mountains to Sea Trail. According to its brochure, the Ohakune Old Coach Road provided an all-weather road link for horse-drawn coaches carrying passengers and goods between the two railheads of the North Island main trunk line. Progress on the new main trunk line was slow due to the rugged landscape [and apparently, too, political argument as to which route would be best: West, East or Central - Central won but only because those North Island politicians who would be most affected by the outcome were not allowed to vote] and so the road provided access until the railheads were finally linked in 1908. The trail mostly follows the original route of a bridle track completed in 1886 and upgraded to a dray road in 1895. Between 1904 and 1906, it was paved with setts (rock pavers), giving it a durable, all-weather surface for heavy horse-drawn traffic. Completed in November 1906, at a point when the distance between the railheads was 39 km. The road remained unused from 1909 until 2005 when a group of locals started the process of reopening for walkers, and cyclists in 2010.

One of the signposts on the trail said that it took 39 hours to cover the 39km by coach. Thirty-nine hours of bone-wearing, body-jolting, bruise-inflicting travel over a cobbled track. Walking would have been preferable in my humble opinion!

DH and I chose to be in the minority and walk the roughly 15km trail (we only saw two other couples walking), while Son#1 and family - and myriad others - rode the trail. Since they only finished an hour before us, I don't think we did too badly. (Contrary to popular-opinion-slash-urban-myth, I suspect riding the trail wasn't an easier option than walking - but that's just my view.)

But this did happen about a third into the walk ...

... hence DH's suggestion for the title of this post.

However, apart from the last few kilometres, even this didn't hold us up much or put too much of a damper on the day (and, when I considered what earlier travellers endured along this route, I felt that I had nothing to complain about).

However, this aside, there was enough along the trail to more than make up for this mishap.

The scenery was incredible ...