An 8am start for only 3 members of the team... with Mariska away trying out the sunshine in Thailand! Our plan was to walk in a circular route around Auckland... to do a bit of hill training on some of the Volcanoes that we live so close to and never visit!It was yet again a dull overcast day... only slight drizzle early on, slowly clearing as the day progressed... thankfully no major showers or rain to dampen our spirits! we started at One tree Hill and headed westwards, climbing Big King first, then shortly thereafter up Mt Roskill!
From there it was a beautiful walk through a park most of the way to Mt Albert... when you walk with us you soon learn that the direct route is usually less interesting, if there are parks along the way! At Mt Albert we took a quick 10 minute snack break before continuing on to Mt Eden.... a rather extended route to follow a lovely treelined walkway we discovered!! Mt Eden, now a very familiar sight, was as ever, very busy with busloads of tourists, so we pushed on into town for a walk through the Domain(and a nosey at the Teddy Bears Picnic Event that was going on) and 
Newmarket Park back towards Andres flat where our fantastic support crew member Lorraine was waiting with pasta salad, the lovely quiche that Avrils mum had made, and all sorts of yummy treats to feed us up for lunch! it was hard to tear ourselves away from all of this to continue on our way... but SOME of us were completely dedicated to the training and perservered!Andre, you only got away with it because you made the trekking up volcanoes look so much easier than it felt! Lorraine you have an excuse to not be support crew now... you obviously distracted Andre far too well from the walking plan at our stop!
From our lunch stop we had three more volcanoes to climb... Mt Hobson, Mt St John and finally One tree Hill. By this time the weather was brightening up and the views of Auckland becoming clearer and more beautiful!! After climbing all 7 volcanoes and covering about 32km we felt we had done a good days walking and exploring!Top effort from Gina, freshly back on the weekend walks after "injury time out" who walked to the start point at One Tree Hill for an hour from home!
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