For more new ground for the club, we headed down to the Waikato yesterday to do another section of the Te Araroa Trail along the mighty Waikato River.  

Jumping out of the bus at Ngaruawahia right by the river, we bee-lined to the start of the trail, which happens to be a very wide, dry foot, shared use trail the whole way.  A good sized group motoring along at a fairly hot pace, with many calls out "bikes", move over, along the way.  This section of the trail is very scenic with gentle autumnal light reflecting across the river, and wind gusts dancing across the surface of the river right beside us the whole way, bar one very short piece.

Being the Waikato, it was a bit cooler down there when we arrived, but most of us heating up quickly requiring a quick stop to shed layers as the sun peeped out from the odd cloud.  

Hamilton living up to it's name of the city of many bridges.  One bright green bridge in particular was quite striking and a similar construction to a white bridge over the new bit of "motorway tunnel" in Auckland and another bridge with amazing Maori motifs up the supports not too far from where we stopped for lunch.  

Why "walking under rainbows"?!   We counted 6 rainbows!  That must be a record for a day trip!   Most of the rainbows were quite vivid and the last rainbow, seemed to last for an hour!   

We were only 15 minutes from the end of the 18-19km walk and our driver extraodinaire, text to find out how far we were from the finish, with the tailing comment, "don't get wet".   Must have jinxed it!   As it hadn't rained all day, just a few light patches of drizzle and the sky promptly deluged on us!  All scurrying for tree cover to don a coat!   

We spotted some awesome fungi (ganoderma) on a couple of trees along the last bit of the walk, that is predominantly board walked through old native forest and the prolific numbers of Beech trees.  

Another thoroughly enjoyable day out, with an awesome bunch of people.