With Loppers at the Ready

Conservation Volunteers New Zealand is joined by British gap-year blogger Ruth Holliday who writes about her time spent with the group in the Telegraph, “doing what is best described as heavy gardening in the back of beyond”, working on the construction and maintenance of Te Araroa national pathway. Also called the “Long Pathway”, Te Araroa is funded by a charitable trust and will eventually run the length of New Zealand from Cape Reinga to Bluff. “The embodiment of Te Araroa is a man named Noel,” writes Holliday, “the project’s construction manager – a rangy Kiwi standing over six feet tall, 65 years old and still running marathons after a heart bypass. He wears very tiny shorts – the old-school  conservationist look. And he is exactly the kind of person who would choose to trek from one end of New Zealand to the other.”