You call that a walk?

 

The Te Araroa website calls it “the walk of a lifetime”: Cape Reinga to Bluff, 3026 kilometres.

“Walk”? Don’t believe it. Walking is something you do to buy a bottle of milk from the corner dairy. But judging by Tim Pankhurst’s book Every Effing Inch, Te Araroa – “New Zealand’s Trail” – is a challenging, arduous trek that tests stamina and resilience to the limit. At times it can be life endangering.

It must test relationships too, but in this case the three protagonists were, miraculously, still on civil terms at the end.

Tim is a former colleague of mine. He and his wife Sue, with their good friend Kerry Prendergast, a former mayor of Wellington, completed Te Araroa in stages over two summers.

Tim, Sue and Kerry are all of pension age. True to the title, they covered every inch of the route. If they couldn’t complete a section because of snow or flooded rivers, they returned later and had a second crack.

I asked Tim a few days ago whether it was worth it. “Hell yes,” he replied. “The privations and strains on old bodies fade but the experiences and sense of achievement remain vivid.”

Tim records some of the vital statistics at the end of the book. Days on the trail: 141. Longest day: 13 hours. Longest distance in a day: 42km. Toenails lost: 7. Bones fractured: 4. Weight lost: 18kg (combined). Nightmares: frequent. He could have added falls: innumerable.

In places, they were pushed to the limit of their endurance and nerve. The Richmond Range, southeast of Nelson, was clearly an ordeal that bordered on traumatic. Yet one of the striking things about Every Effing Inch, for me, was that for every gut-busting climb, vertiginous descent and every breath-taking alpine or coastal vista, of which there were plenty, there also seemed to be periods of tedious slog through country that had little to commend it in terms of scenic value. In places, the three adventurers also had to share busy roads with fast-moving traffic that gave them little space.

Wherever possible, they treated themselves to luxury accommodation. Kerry’s husband Rex was often waiting patiently at the end of the day’s tramp to drive them to warm beds and hot showers. But on 38 nights in more remote places, they had no option but to stay in back-country huts, the standard of which varied wildly.

This served as a salutary reminder of why tramping has never appealed to me. The physical demands are manageable, but you have no control over the people you might end up sharing a hut with. My greatest dread, always, was the prospect of being confined with bores, but it seems that boors – noisy, selfish oafs who booze and play loud music when others are trying to sleep – are a greater hazard.

The journalist in Tim emerges when he augments his account by regaling the reader with sometimes dry background information about the places they pass through. These diversions can get in the way of the main narrative, but he also enriches the story with sketches of interesting and significant characters who pop up along the way.

The mere fact that he wrote the book at all – that he had the energy and commitment to record in detail each day’s experiences and observations – commands respect.

Similarly, it’s impossible to read Every Effing Inch and not be awed by the efforts of another journalist, Geoff Chapple, whose idea it was to create a walking route that ran the length of the country – not to mention the many thousands of nameless intrepid trailblazers, dating back to pre-European times, who created the network of tracks that made it possible.

Hang on - did I just say "walking" route?

Every Effing Inch is available from the Underground Bookstore for $40.