Have been back to the 5 th wheel parked at our friends, the Ward family , beekeepers based in Hawea. Have enjoyed very much time with this family and was reluctant to relocate the 5 th north too quickly , so elected to do the next section in reverse . From NOBO I changed to SOBO for the three days . Also a Northland friend of ours , Beth Masser has been in the south adventuring with a few big walks . I invited her to join me on this section and she was keen to see this area to tick it off her impressive list of “palmares”
Not having walked with a buddy on the first sections this walk was a novelty with shared laughs and an enjoyable walk too . Hard for Beth as I’m getting a little hearing impaired so she had to repeat herself often in our rambling dialogue.
Day one tackled the Martha saddle , nothing too arduous but at about 26 km still a full day till arriving at Top Timaru Hut
Day 2 was totally fun , a long walk down the Timaru river , rock hoping , constantly crossing and recrossing the river . Just a fun day before a 1.5 hour cruelly steep climb up to an ancient shepherds hut called Stody’s Hut . A wet feet day .
Day 3 was a pleasant amble in the tussock zone before ascending Breast Hill , the high point of the trip 1578m . From here the views down to Hawea and surrounds are amazing .
The walk down to the lake was really steep and slow going and the day heated up . Took us a little under 7 hours to get to the lake where we both took a well earned swim to cool down the engines. Peter in his usual incredible kindness came and picked us up and ferried us to our respective abodes .
Great walk with Beth where nutrition was a frequent topic of conversation. We are both on the same page on one very important point . “ Nutrition should focus on eating natural whole foods , avoiding the processed crap that lines our supermarkets “
However Beth is biased towards plants and fibre where I see animal sourced foods as paramount .
The differences seem to speak for themselves 😉😂
Now relocating the 5th wheel North to Lake Coleridge , which is my base while I walk the sections up from Tekapo
whatisbruceupto 
I think what we can take from this is that those on plant based diets are more likely to spell their first names correctly?! Nice blog. The adventure continutes……
First time I’ve heard Timaru river walk described as “fun”! Sylvia
Thanks Sylvia for all your comments . It’s been a lot of fun eh and still more to come . Looking forward to the Nelson lakes section in a couple of weeks or so . When did you do the walk ?