Another long walk - but not the longest - ten years ago

This week my 30 mile walk was definitely my longest in a day - but ten years ago in New Zealand I came close to that mark and, thanks to the wonders of modern science ( Googlemaps) I  can confirm my longest day's walk when I covered the South Island's 600 miles in a month was a couple of miles shorter - BUT - I carried a full pack for the last 20 miles. Google lists the distance from Dunsandel to Ashburton at 47km and 30 miles is 50 km.

I wrote about it in my book "Mark Down the South Island" - available on Kindle from Amazon - and post the chapter here -

Chapter Thirteen - Dunsandel to Ashburton - The Marathon 

On this day our hero walks 26 miles, 42 kilometres, a marathon distance - ten before breakfast without a pack and 16 after with the heavy pack, from Rakaia to Ashburton, performs to 200 people and has his prayers answered.

The day began at 6am. The long straights of the Canterbury Plains were still not conquered, nor the darkness in midwinter. Ken had dropped  me off  back where I’d hitched a ride the night before. It was a long way back north but there was no compromising. If I wanted to say, unequivocally, without contradiction, even by myself, that I’d walked the South Island I had to go back to where I started.

It was freezing cold. Snow lay piled in drifts from the fall three days before and this snow I was to see for the next few days despite relatively fine weather. We figured I’d be back in about three hours and I noticed as I got the sleep out of my head that this was a very long straight by New Zealand standards.

Ken was used to early rises. The life of a bed and breakfast man and wife meant making exactly that but not in that order; first the breakfast for the handful of guests, then the beds. The rest of the day’s your own.

What motivated this man to rise even earlier that usual to get me back to my breaking off/starting point?  The price of the accommodation was a simple, almost paltry, $60. At that rate he and his wife were battling. I learned later he also sold real estate, and gave some fine, uncompromising South Island hospitality. Doubtless he’d done the same and more many times and his “going the extra mile” was not the first on that eventful journey, a Christian act without even stopping to think about it. He was just happy to be part of the adventure.

He dropped me off, a shade after 6am and I watched his tail-lights disappear. They seemed to take a long time. Well wrapped I set off after them. No idea how fast I was going, I set a steady pace nevertheless in the pitch darkness. I used my torch to highlight my position to oncoming motorists.

Little wind and the promise of a clear morning, I soon saw a light ahead and knew it was an oncoming car. What else could it be, unless it was the train on the tracks that ran parallel? This was the South Island main highway, and there was just one car on it about six miles away. I counted a full five minutes before that light, running towards me at 60 mph or more, became two headlights, grew larger and then whizzed past. Five minutes at 60mph equals - do the math - 100 divided by 12 equals -5 miles of straight - that is how far the car was away when it first appeared.

I kept on at pace, without a pack on me or breakfast inside it was easy to walk quickly, about 4mph - that meant I would get round the bend in about an hour and a quarter - but there was no way to tell how fast I was doing. All was relative, to the dark and the still early morning.

Soon lights began to take four and a half minutes to reach me, then four, and still the dawn refused to arrive. I had no idea how fast I was going, just that I was warm enough thank you and the lights when they appeared were closing in on me at shorter and shorter intervals. But always they were just the single light, still too far off to appear as two at first. Well you can draw an allegory from that if you like. I was just happy to draw near to breakfast.

The first time I drove on this stretch was the first time I drove, aged 18. Well I’d had a few lessons but I was hardly ready for the unnerving stint behind the wheel of a friend’s Austin A40 on a winter’s evening- on and on that road went and the effort  to steer straight, not yet naturally learned, was  enormous.

Much more fun a year later, again in winter, when I drove another old Austin,  David Wickham’s A40 Countryman, a vehicle he called his “three litre mass-o-rattles” instead of Maserati, to Dunedin in the middle of the night.

I’d only come to keep him awake but he fell asleep about 15 miles into the journey, or rather the car slowed and I realised that if we were going any further I’d be driving, still without a licence, to Dunedin. Some journeys are a watershed and this was one of them. These days, in modern cars, the Christchurch-Dunedin journey takes about five hours. This was longer. Hampered by a head wind, the mass-o-rattles rarely went faster than 50mph. We froze without an adequate heater but Wick slept though it. The one stop was about 3am in Timaru, no friendly all-night gas station in 1969, just a lone pint of milk on the steps of an office building, freezing cold and feloniously obtained.  Wick slept on as Dunedin and the reason for our journey  approached. The city was snowed in and we’d wanted to see it and be part of it. Chains were needed on the hills north of the city and high winds blew us out of our lane as we approached. The southern city in the pre-dawn looked like a Christmas-scene postcard..

Bang on 7am and eight hours since we left Christchurch, we knocked on the door of student friends from high school, the light just enough to see the remains of a snowman in the front yard. They were as amazed as we hoped they would be but Wick rained on the parade a little by announcing he was staying a few days.

I had to be on stage that night. I thought we were turning round and driving straight back, that’s why I came. I was in what was to become a legendary production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Dame Ngaio Marsh and starring Sam Neill, though the programme called him Nigel in those days. Right under his name was mine, at 19 I was playing old Egeus, father of one of the young lovers.

But not much use if I was stuck in Dunedin. Here is why the journey became a watershed. I got back OK, hitch-hiking naturally, and Wick returned a few days later with a hitch-hiker of his own. John was an Australian diver (taking a break from being an accountant) who lived in Invercargill but had a girlfriend in Christchurch. He would come to visit often in the next few months. A year later I was staying with him in Adelaide where we flatted together for two years, where I studied theatre. Had it not been for John I would not have gone to Adelaide and been told I would be a lost soul all my life I did not make theatre my life. Actually the question then and now, was how to combine theatre and worship of God. Mark is the answer there.

Rakaia drew nearer as the night turned to day but there was one obstacle left – the mile long road bridge was very narrow.

It was and still is also the longest bridge in the roading network. The Rakaia is a braided river and its changing channels are spread over a wide area, necessitating the longest bridge on the state highway network, with a length of 1.1 miles. In normal flows the braided river channels sweep in winding courses across the gravel beds, which are up to a mile wide. During summer floods, fed by the melting snow, the waters reach from bank to bank, so long multispan structures are needed to bridge such a river.

Because of its climate and topography, New Zealand has more bridges, on a population basis, than any other country in the world. An early solution to the problem of cost was to build a bridge for combined use by rail and road traffic. But that was in 1873. In 1939 they opened a road bridge alongside that still stands and took away the now unnecessary road part of the rail bridge.

I decided to skip two hundred metres inland and take the rail bridge, and use the fact that trains did not run on Sundays in the South Island. No passenger trains ran anymore. The glamour of rail travel that enthrals Europe and its large population does not excite tourists and certainly not the native population. The Christchurch-Dunedin- Invercargill trains died out long ago and the goods trains only ran during the week – leaving the bridge for me alone. 

Travellers who scoot across the road bridge miss something special and the word should get out that a Sunday morning walk across the bridge, with no fear of a train coming should be on everyone’s to do list. Maybe an excursion train would come – but that’s where faith, and the emergency laybys, come in.

It was a glorious walk in the early morning; the snow drifts on the side of the road behind me gave way to mountains reaching almost down to the river in the distance as I looked upstream. Below me the classic blue of the South Island glacial melt river and braids sweeping and turning as they formed their own course. By contrast mine was right ahead and I clipped along happily, savouring the moment that the mountains put their winter coat on against the clear blue of the still Sunday morning. I reached the guest house again about 9.30 am and found a late breakfast waiting and so it was not much before 11am that I set off for  Ashburton, pack-a-back and already 10 miles under my belt with another 17 to go.  

At three miles an hour, pack-pace, that looked like a 5pm arrival in Ashburton and I tried hard to keep a steady pace. It was flat and easy walking but my feet were getting sore. The organisers of the Gospel presentation that evening did their best to keep me encouraged by cellphone and the local press came out to meet me, take a picture and leave me to it. Not many places to find a drink and I sipped at my meagre supply.  

My feet were sore. It was the first time I had found any physical trouble. No sore knees, back and least of all feet, until now. I think the new trainers were the problem, rubbing hard against my heels. I was still striding along but giving a few limping moments when I young man pulled up alongside.

“Are you Geoffrey? I am coming to hear you tonight”

“Great… how far to go ?”

“About five miles now. God has told me to pray for your feet.  Get in”

Although this was the main highway. Route 1, it was only one lane wide in either direction and did not need to be any more.  He was close enough to touch almost as he pulled alongside and I took the pack off and hobbled across to him.

We prayed then and there, in the front seat, for the Lord to bless my sore feet, to give me purpose and reach my destination safely. It was a simple and  loving act and when I raised my head I felt lighter and younger and my feet had no pain. I skipped across the road  back to my pack and set off again, renewed and thanking the Lord for sending me his faithful servant.

Soon the organiser arrived with another drink and I kept going as night closed, just before the town of  Ashburton hove in view – as sailors don’t say. At my host’s house they gave me a warm bath and a little rest,  some methylated spirits for my feet and the opportunity to savour my longest day – 27 miles including 17 with the pack. A marathon whichever measurement you make.

I presented Mark in bare feet that evening and later several members of the audience said they could see the blisters. One man stopped me in the street  the next day as I was walking out of Ashburton and told me I had been limping so badly he wanted to offer me a lift. Bless him.

There were about 120 people that heard Mark’s Gospel presented after that marathon day and there was probably no better reconstruction of how the Gospel was first brought to people, not only all over the Middle East but all over the world, by people walking and by word of mouth.