Still on track after two decades
Bathing under the stars, meeting people from across the world, and finding space to recharge has fuelled one Canterbury woman’s 20-year love affair with a special walking track.
This week marks the 20th time Alison Anderson has undertaken her annual pilgrimage to Akaroa to walk the fourday Banks Peninsula Track.
After a series of suicides in her hometown of Temuka, Anderson, a funeral celebrant, needed some space and decided to get away for a few days to recharge.
Two decades later, she is still walking the track.
‘‘It’s the only track I do,’’ she said. ‘‘Afterwards I come home, wash the sheep poo from the cleats of my boots and put them under the bed until the next year.’’
Anderson said the track’s scenery was breathtaking, and while she appreciated the flush toilets and showers available at some places along the way, she loved that
"Afterwards I come home, wash the sheep poo from the cleats of my boots and put them under the bed until the next year."
she could have a bath under the stars at one of the stops.
Her greatest joy though came from the people she met along the way.
‘‘I’ve become a bit like camp mother. It’s always different people and lots of overseas tourists,’’ she said.
Experiencing an earthquake late one night was a bit unnerving, but the two German tourists with her made it memorable.
‘‘They had never experienced an earthquake before and we were lying on our bunks in the dark and one said ‘I go toilet now’.’’
She also recalled meeting a young woman who arrived from Israel after completing two years of mandatory service, and who became her walking companion.
Accommodation providers went out of their way to make people feel welcome and it was common to see fresh flowers in rooms for the trampers, she said.
It will be Doug Hood’s last year running Otanerito Beach House, after Brian and Fay Narbey, owners of Renegat Farm, withdraw from the cooperative agreement of the track’s landowners in April 2017.
‘‘Visitors will no longer visit enchanting Sleepy Cove with it’s fallen sea arch, splendid waterfall and resident seal population, or visit the headland claimed as the historic pa site where Ngai Tahu defeated Ngati Mamoe,’’ Hood told the Akaroa Mail last year.
Anderson has not ruled out coming back next year for the shortened threeday walk, but said her 20th trip, which she completed on Monday, was extra special given the changing landscape.