Sue Lovatt is walking every day for herself and to keep up with her grandkids.

“Sounds like a murder sometimes,” Sue Lovett says of the cries coming from kiwi she occasionally encounters on her walks around and beyond Oban on Rakiura.

She has a natural inclination for remote locales; she and her husband spent some of a pre-covid dream holiday exploring places like Vladivostok and Blagoveshchensk in Russia, and -20 degree ice roads and frozen lakes in Siberia. Tourism is not developed there and they found the people “authentic.”

Sue, a grandmother of three, has noticed her fitness levels, earned over 20 years farming in Canterbury,  are “not coming the way they used to.”

Just getting her one-year-old grandson dressed for a walk is like “wrestling with an eel, every limb in a different direction” and she feels it’s now time to not only keep up with herself, but with her grandkids.

Losing a few kilograms is another motivator for joining Walk1200km, she wants to be “a reasonable, comfortable weight… I know what feels good for me.”

She loves taking pictures to encourage others to walk daily (as she is) and to visit Rakiura Stewart Island.

“People have a wacky perception of what it’s like; they think it’s cold. It’s not.”

Join Sue and thousands of others in making 2023 your best year ever. Join Walk1200km.