• Te Araroa Day 31
• Orewa Beach to Silverdale – 7km in 2 hours 10 minutes

This morning Brenda (Laureen’s mother and owner of the place I was staying) popped in. I was really glad to meet her, chat about her upcoming South Island tour holiday, and thank her for the lovely place to stay.

My luck continued as Suzette had very kindly arranged for her friend Mary to host me in Stillwater tonight! She was out and about doing some errands, and happy to give me a lift from Silverdale. The road into Stillwater is really treacherous because there’s no verge in places and a lot of blind corners. I’d heard about near misses with TA hikers, and decided before starting my journey that it wasn’t worth it.

Still reeling a little bit from yesterday afternoon’s walk, I was glad to just have 7 km to go today. The path ran alongside an estuary, then headed uphill into Silverdale – a busy shopping area.

I made a beeline for Ingo’s German Bakery which I’d decided would be a good place for a cup of tea and some comfort eating. It was everything I hoped and dreamed, and the lady who served me was really chatty, and gave me an extra hazelnut swirl after she heard about my adventure!

Mary kindly scooped me up from our rendezvous point at the Plant Barn, and after a quick trip to Fruit World we zipped down the sketchy road. She lives right on the trail near Stillwater Boat Club, and the minute I entered her house I knew we would get on well. She had lovely bright blue sofas, blue cabinets in her kitchen… basically blue everywhere! Mary has done a lot of sailing so perhaps had a more solid reason for all the blues and greens than my somewhat odd obsession with my favourite colour.

After a delicious lunch and a bit of a rest, offering to pull out a pesky thistle turned into ‘what other gardening can I help with?’. It was really refreshing to do something other than walking, and nice to be able to do something to help my kind host. While we gardened, Mary entertained me with stories about the various WWOOFers she’d had in the past. We picked fresh lettuce, basil, and rocket from the garden to make a salad for dinner. There were roast vegetables and baked chicken to go with it, and it made a very tasty change from my regular dehydrated dinners! I felt really spoilt to have a spa after dinner, and went to bed much more ready to take on the final challenge before Auckland – tomorrow’s river crossing.