After what seemed to be weeks and weeks of rain this Saturday morning the sun was out again. A good start for the easy ‘novelty’ walk to the Rimutaka Forest Park organised by Steve. (Originally, the ‘novelty’ part was to be hot lasagne; later changed for soup.)
We met part of our group at platform 9 as usual and joined up with another group that was going on the same walk because their walk had been cancelled the week before (remember that Saturday?). The rest of the group was already waiting for us at the car park at the entrance. All in all we were a good sized group of eleven.
An easy hour and a half walk through the forest took us to the Orongorongo River and with a large part of the riverbed dry, it offered us a lovely sunny spot for an early lunch.
Everyone was quite keen to try to make a campfire to heat the pumpkin soup that Steve had brought along. Fortunately the bushes growing in the riverbed were still dry enough and combined with the use of a small burning rubber strip it did the trick. The more experienced trampers in our group got the fire going within no time.
While Steve’s soup was heating he showed us how to use a magnesium flint to make a fire. Even in the quite damp conditions it was possible to light the wood shavings with the sparks.
After a very tasty and nutritious cup of soup and a cup of tea we cleaned up our fire place and walked back to the car park along the same track.
So a big thanks to the weather gods for a lovely sunny day, to Steve for the campfire and the delicious soup, and to all the other people on the walk for making this a great day.