UNTIL NZ’s 10th Great Walk, the Paparoa Track, was launched last year there has been nine Great Walks for decades and our dream was to walk these over nine weeks with a total of 550km of walking – a challenge on many fronts. The seed of the idea had been around since visiting New Zealand over 15 years ago and walking some day sections on a couple of the Great Walks. The beauty of the landscape completely blew me away and it was the trip that started my lifelong love of hiking. On leaving the country I vowed one day to come back to walk the tracks in full.
On deciding to take a career break, the idea of walking the tracks came back to the forefront of my mind and we decided, if not now then when? We were keen for a challenge and settled on hiking one trail per week. Then all we had to do was wait until that flight to Auckland.
1 Routeburn Track (Mount Aspiring and Fiordland)
The Routeburn is one of the most famous of the Great Walks and we couldn’t think of a better way to kick off the challenge than with a world-class track.
