Day 3 Amberley - Hurunui River Bridge

Distance walked by me and Rapid 43.6km. Ella walked about 12.5km. 59171 steps
Today it rain for the first time. I was late getting organised and as a consequence it was half an hour late when Paul got me to the start of the walk. This was probably just as well as it was still fairly dark and I think at 7am it would have been too dark to walk safely.

Today's hero award belongs to Kathryn from Waipara. She saw us walking through Amberley last night and again this morning on her way to Rangiora. Kathryn bought some Smacko's for the dogs and drove out past here home to find us on here return from Rangiora.

The other award would have to go to a driver for STL Linehaul who drove through a puddle as he passed me. He only needed to move over 100mm to avoid the puddle and there was no oncoming traffic.

I trust that the tickets in the blister sweepstakes have been sold by now so I can reveal that I got the first blister on the afternoon of the first day and I have added a blister each day since. My feet are quite tender. Rapid's feet appear to be standing up fine but I will put his shoes on him tomorrow just as a precaution.

Paul has been a fantastic support person. He regularly stops and walks with me for a kilometre or so then goes back to the van and drives on for another few kilometres and meets me again. Drinks appear as needed. Tonight he cooked dinner while I took a nap and is doing the dishes while I write this blog.

About 11:30am I reached 100km walked.

The mornings walk was pretty much flat but at midday I met the first hill of the walk - a 3km climb from the railway crossing at Spye before descending into the Greta Valley. The little wind there was came from the north and was mostly barely noticeable. Either it picked up as I climbed the hill or I just noticed it more since I was now working against gravity and the wind.

I arrived at Greta Valley the lunch stop still the 30 minutes late I was at the start when planning the routes I thought I would have enough time for a 20 minute lunch break within the time allowed but this is not the case. Lunch stop was nearly an hour and somewhere I lost another 10 minutes to be 90 minutes behind schedule at the end of the days walk.

Paul drove behind me across the Hurunui River bridge so I still don't know if the traffic will stop for a pedestrian on a single lane bridge. The next one is in Marlborough.

The weather forecast for Sunday, Monday, Tuesday is truly awful - snow and bitterly cold southerlies. Sunday is a rest day but I will need to make some progress on Monday and Tuesday. I suspect I may fall behind timetable beacause of the weather and have to forgo the next rest day at Blenheim.

I had a ring at lunch time from the Rangiora local paper who are going to run an article and wanted to use the photo from yesterdays blog.