By Lewis Thomson, 27 April 2024
A note from the author. With the style of writing, I have attempted to capture the spirit of the trip, and perhaps too the spirit of the club more generally: Chaotic, rambling, without much direction or plan, but all in good cheer, and of course never taking things too seriously. I'm writing most of this a good few months from the events taking place, and I won't lie the details are a little hazy. But even if I wrote this the day after it happened I somehow don't think it would've changed the content much. Proceed dear reader, at your own leisure, but just remember this is a faff report.
Day 1
Stormy ferry ride.
A rainbow in the sky.
Stocked up at the Blenheim Pak n Save, spent way too long looking for lentils. Packed the food into the car. Food fell out of the car onto the ground, picked up food off the ground.
Supplies: 2 kg of sausages, 2 kumara, At least 23 carrots.
We spent two hours at the carpark running packing up drills. Very successful. Walked in the dark and because of faff did not make it to the hut and camped at the river flats instead.
The next morning the easter bunny had arrived. Happy Easter! Tommy tried to get the cooker going and it kept catching on fire, so Tommy heroically ripped off his shirt and doused it in the river and smothered the fire out. The cooker still worked too.
Day 2
Lewis spent a long time in the hut drawing a particularly cursed-looking sheep.
We all had a bidet in camera gully, the first of many.
Once we arrived at our spot to camp we spent alot of time pushing big rocks around, only to move to another campsite and push some more big rocks around.
Day 3
The next day, a lot of actual tramping and very little faffing took place. Lewis and Tommy had got some big mountaineering ideas in their heads and decided instead of faffing to climb some mountain. Lochie and Rewa nobly pushed on and spent the day sunbathing by the lake while Tommy and Lewis were scrambling around somewhere.
But you will be pleased to hear faffing was not completely forsaken, Lewis spent a very long time on the top eating all of his bread rolls and then really needed to take a dump. Tommy then announced he had long covid but this did not seem to slow him down at all.
A brief musical interlude:
To the tune of Tararua ranges:
Lewis has got some big ideas
He wants to be some mountaineer
He's forgotten why we're really here!
For faffing in the ranges
Back at the campsite Tommy and Lewis recounted their surprise meeting with Patrick Hayes, Ivan Andrews and Geoff Spearpoint. Another michelin star-level cook up, followed by gazing at the alpine sky.
Day 4
We dropped back down into the valley, it was slow, we were all grumpy. Once we reached the ada Rewa had had enough and raced off ahead. Tommy and Lochie talked about tractors. We then raced after Rewa thinking we'd catch her any second but didn't. Finally as it was getting dark we found her and to this day I still have no clue how she got so far ahead.
We camped on the cold river flats, Tommy made a fire and we ate lentils and looked at the stars. I have to say the stars were very beautiful on this trip.
Another musical interlude.
To the tune of the duck song:
I came to the Ada on a sunny day
And I said to the Ada oh won't you stay?
She said 'no' bum - bum - bum
The adawodl away
Adawodl away, adawodl. Adawodl away, adawodl wodl. Adawodl away. wodl wodl
Till the very next day ... (bum x7)
Day 5
The next day we decided 'hey why don't go up this spur onto the zamps, that will be fun right?'
No. What followed was one of the most heinous bush bashes you can imagine. Literally just a massive thicket of beech saplings that kept going on and on. Words cannot describe the pain, the desperation. Even adawodl songs weren't enought to cheer us through it.
I have a vague memory of lying face down in some moss while Tommy hit a big tree over and over again. Mental states had certainly destabilised.
Eventually, I just beelined it until I was out of there, before long we reunited and came out onto the tops. We zamped along the zamps, and now you're thinking 'maybe it is time things took a turn for a better?' But alas, you would be mistaken.
Instead the weather started to come in, a cold westerly wind blowing. Forced to retreat we descended down the other side into a stream headwaters. Tommy and I faffed about looking for a route down through the bluffs, I then thought maybe it'd be fun to leave my pack somewhere and then make everyone spend ages looking for it. Down in the valley we reached the bush and Lochie suggested we just camp there as it was already getting dark. This was really a very silly suggestion as the place was obviously giving the heebeegeebees so we sensibly kept going through the dark. I seem to remember only two people had a head torch at any one time, I can't remember if this was because we only had two between us or we just wanted to make things more interesting. After bush-bashing past many meh-looking camp sites we finally found a slightly less meh-looking camp site. Ah the joys of a hot dinner! Only the petrol ran out halfway through cooking the first batch of pasta so we all ate half-cooked pasta except for Tommy who ate not really cooked at all pasta.
Day 6
It rained in the night, and we woke up to everything soaking wet. After a few bidets Lochie and Rewa got going with Tommy and I taking up the rear. The rain soon cleared and we were walking along open river flats. I won't lie the pleasure of this was somewhat lessened by the copious amounts of faeces everywhere. The hunters we saw obviously weren't doing their job very well.
Eventually, we reached the Anne hut and I found a children's encyclopedia to read. But where were Lochie and Rewa?? Considering they had left a good deal before us they should've been here by now.
Turns out they had gone to the wrong Anne hut due to an out-of-date map. You can imagine their disappointment when upon reaching what they thought was the hut they instead discovered some grass and burnt timbers. After backtracking for quite a while they eventually reunited with us.
This was when the group decided to split. Rewa had, quite fairly, had enough of tramping à la Thomson and so they decided to just head out back down the St James while Tommy and I wandered back into the hills.
Perhaps you are getting tired of these tales of misery and woe, and I will be honest with you dear reader, so am I. Yet the tale demands to be told. As we walked along the tops Tommy suddenly had a thought "we were meant to get that lighter from Lochie ay". "Yeah" I replied...
After some pitiful attempts at drying out Tommy's sodden matches eventually there was nothing for it but to just turn in for the night. I ate some peanut butter wraps for dinner, while Tommy experimented with uncooked lentils and rice noodles before giving up and eating a raw onion instead. The tent smelt very yummy that night.
Day 7
With an eager reason to get out of the hills as soon as possible, we raced along the craggy tops. But not before finding a strange structure to faff about at, where the usual shenanigans ensued.
(okay there's meant to be a photo here of Tommy standing on a ladder but I couldn't find it so you're just gonna have to use your imagination)
Down in the campsite, the group was reunited and thus the trip came to a happy conclusion. We all ate instant mash on the ferry ride the next day like the champs we were.
So ends this tale of four adawodls.
Tommy, Lewis, Lochie, Rewa
To finish here is Lochie's drawing of what he thought an adawodl looks like (he'd never actually seen one before, or realised that they are actually not called awadodls). But he did a pretty good job I think.
