Karangahake Gorge - Sunday

We thought we would give Totty a treat and take her on a walk through the gorge - she is now very, very tired!

Karangahake is about an hours drive and so we stopped half way for coffee in Katikati - we have to have our coffee. Totty was given a dish of water.

There are many different walks you can take in the gorge and it is a very popular place for Kiwis. Some of the walks are short and easy and some are long and more difficult. We took the difficult walk called Dykes Trail (pronounced Dickies). To start with we had to cross the river via a wooden bridge which was very long and very wobbly and we didn't get a picture of it as both Totty and I hated it and half way across on the way back she just stopped as the people ahead of us were making it move about so much, I had to drag her across!

The walk was amazing and you pass lots of entrances to tunnels that were once used for mining gold. We crossed over 15 bridges but, thankfully, not all of them were wobbly. We walked along very narrow tracks and I had to keep a tight hold of Totty's lead as, at some points, the river was a long way down! We reached some pretty waterfalls and had lunch. The next part of the track was through a very long, dark tunnel - 80m - and after speaking to one of the locals we decided not to go through as we didn't have a torch and it looked a bit wet underfoot and I was not wearing trainers and I am not sure that Totty would have liked it either. The locals said we could go through with them as they had a torch but it was not a loop track and we would have had to come back that way too. Jon and I will go back another day with a torch and do it without the dog. It can take four hours if you go all the way to the end and back!!! There were a few muddy patches and I did get in a bit of a mess but it was a really lovely walk and we will certainly go back again and do some of the other tracks.