Weekend - Friday 5 December 2014 to Sunday 7 December 2014 (3 days)

The weekend started with an early and very smoothly driven start thanks to our competent drivers Laurence and Lee. We arrived in the Raglan Camping Grounds at around 10.00pm with a clear and windless moonlit sky. Plenty of sleep-time for those of us who wanted to put up tents, while the rest of the team snoozed on in the comfort of Big Blue.

We attacked Karioi bright and early the next day under the tender guidance of our ever-patient leader, Kay Willcocks, after having to turn a decisive deaf ear to the rumbling moans about what time we should start in the morning.

Karioi was all it promised to be on paper... steep, challenging and nothing but up up and up... 756m in fact. Some of us initially attempted to scramble down to sea level to make this 756m figure a reality, but much to Tony and Antals’ frustration we were unsuccessful in finding the correct path down and knowing that there was a full day of uphill climbing to consider, we abandoned that plan. We proceeded to head upwards enticed by the promise of wonderful views of Raglan Harbour and were also rewarded with a minuscule glimpse of the snow-clad peak of Mount Taranaki peeping above the cloud. We continued to scramble up steep chain assisted banks dripping in water, grasping at slippery rootholds and maneuvering muddy bogs. With Kay’s encouragement we swung like monkeys and that eventually got us to the top of Karioi, puffing and panting and in time for lunch. The descent was less of a challenge, finishing with a gentle meander through beautiful Waikato farmland.

Back to Raglan by 3.00 for the electric jug on and afternoon tea cake, a "de-mudding" in steaming hot showers and off to check out the coffee, shops and pub - tramping had now become more like a glamping experience. This gave the trampers the opportunity to show off some of their other talents.... Graham’s culinary skills in producing a strawberry tart drizzled with alcohol infused Grand Marnier whipped cream. This was enthusiastically consumed by all present. In fact June became so enamored with this cream she was gallantly slathering it on every consumable that she could lay her hands on. Karen showed us her ability to consume a whole pizza by herself while at the same time bravely putting up with a severe bout of hay fever.

In between sampling Raglans coffee and dining at the local historic pub we did do some more tramping. The next day we headed to The Four Brothers Track to link up with the Karamu walkway. We completed this in an impressive 4 hours. This walk lead us through gentle rolling pasture studded with out crops of limestone before dropping down into some beautiful bush.

I came away from the weekend with a new understanding of the importance of following a ‘dipstick tramper’ when traversing muddy terrain in order to save myself from falling foul to knee deep mud - thanks for that advice Mike Heilbron and hopefully I’ve reciprocated by teaching you how to make a good cake.

We were Antal Kalocsai, Catherine Doyle (Scribe), Christine Turnbull, Graeme Pollock, June Cripps, Karen Manning, Kay Willcocks (Leader), Laurence Beard (Driver), Lee McKay (Driver), Liz and Phil Ware, Mark Abela, Mike Heilbron and Tony Walton