As advertised, this was a hard  tramp: a loop with the hope of doing a little of track bush crashing. The day promised to be fine for the most part with only a short shower keeping the weather man honest. We all met up at my place and travelled to the end of Long Road the start of the track started at around 9.15 am,  after a brief introduction we headed up the Long track to the farm paddocks at the top. From there we headed over the paddock to a little-known ridge track which does not appear on current maps. You should ask old trampers and collectors of maps for this information; thanks, Laurie King. A well-formed old farm track  then took us to a very old fence line which runs from the ridge to the Wainamu stream above the falls. This was rather over grown and steep in places with a few of us taking tumbles more than once.  This didn’t take as long as I had expected and we dropped down to the stream not too far off the last post of the fence. To our surprise and amusement, there was a couple taking the plunge in the stream. We carried on downstream and around the lake foreshore to the start of the Houghton bush track which was muddy. The condition of the tracks and the mud made the going slow and kissing the ground was attributed to every member. Stopping at Wainamu junction for lunch was a time to get refreshed ready to do the 2hour trek along the Wainamu bush track to Long Road. The sign said 2 hours from the junction to Long Road, but it was really 1 hour at our pace. Fiona led this section so sometimes the signs are misleading? On this track, we were passed by three runners going in the other direction at a fair clip.  Yes, there are mad people in this world other than Donald Trump. The final leg along the long track completed the loop giving a total time of approx. 7 hours for the trip making this a good stretch and conditioning for the new tramping season. COST: travel $10