Woke this morning with the intention of departing back east by 8 30 am.

Went down to the river early on and the stars were out. It was gonna be a great day. The weather forecast I was hearing on the radio had changed and was now predicting it would be clearing, and a front coming through in three days.

Why not stay another day, and go to the Grant Burn Bivvy?

No need to pack. A day trip was in order.

Good thinking.

Meanwhile, last night more than an hour after dark, a couple walked in, and so I had a reasonable level of conversation after a week.

Well, six days since I briefly chatted to a possum hunter on Day 2.

It was fairly boggy underfoot as I went further west on the South Coast Track, but not much traffic at this end, so it isn’t deep. Just wet.

Much of the way to Grant Burn is through manuka scrub which is much like going into a tunnel. Not much to observe, other than where to put your feet.

Towards the end, it gets into mature rimu forest that is more interesting walking for me, as it is much more open.

No sign of the hut, so I walked on for another half hour beyond the swingbridge at Grant Burn.

Nope.

The openness of the forest is quite conducive for some panoramas, so spent some time with that.

On my way back I noticed an unmarked track near the swingbridge and following it found a small hut. It’s been there since 2012 for all the bio workers.

After lunch went down to the beach, and found plenty of deer and pig tracks in the sand.

The sun was now beaming furiously, but I noted showers to the east.

I thought there might be a possibility of walking back by the beach. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure which way the tide was heading. I ambled down to the first point, but I was obviously going to get wet if I proceeded. Also, if the tide was seriously coming in there was certainly no way I could climb the crumbly bouldery 20 m high cliff. No problem at low tide, however, but that would be for another day.

Seemed I’d be more sensible to slosh my way back through the mud.

As usual the way home seemed very much shorter, and didn’t take even two more hours.

Yeah, it’s been a reasonable day out.

Whatever happens, it doesn’t really matter about the weather later tomorrow, when I’m deep in the forest. The key is getting across those streams.

Fingers crossed, because I now don’t have much in the way of spare food.

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