I found a new way into Belmont Regional Park that I’d previously not known about, heading up through Granada North where there’s a new sub-division going in, then just following the roads until they fade away. In hindsight I think I might have accidentally crossed about 50 metres of private land (hopefully no more), which I realised upon emerging at the end of someone’s driveway, so I’m not 100% sure if there’s a complete public access corridor going through there.

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I decided about half way through the day that I’d like to get to Whitby, which is the suburb in which I grew up. It would have been nice to have been able to follow Duck Creek from Belmont Regional Park all the way, but unfortunately it’s blocked off as more private land and so I had to divert back into suburbia and walk around the streets.

It was strange walking around Whitby. I haven’t lived there for 17 years, but there are memories everywhere, and much of it doesn’t seem to have changed so much. Other things have, though. Everything seems so much more condensed. Great hills that I remember as taking much effort to climb feel unusually shallow. Walking through my old school in which I spent my entire primary and intermediate career, all of the buildings feel smaller. It’s hard to imagine how we spent so much time running around here without constantly hitting the walls. I guess people grow up.

The property developers have taken over some of the great areas of recreation. I have wonderful memories of flying kites through the area that’s now a fenced off retirement village. It was always going to happen, and despite having been very sad to leave in 1992, I’m not sure I could go back to live there again, at least with the same expectations.

It was late in the day, in any case, and I resumed my plan of aiming for the 6.34pm train from Paremata back home again… more of a challenge than I expected given how my feet were starting to give up. There was still enough summer daylight left to make the walk around Pauatahanui Inlet worthwhile, and when I arrived at the train station at exactly 6.34pm, it was only a shame the train was running 20 minutes late.

I guess what had turned into a 43 km walk was quite a shock to the system when it’d been a while, and my right knee now seems to be playing up. Hopefully things will improve in the next week or two, though.

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Along the ridge-top of the Skyline Walkway, the wind was really starting to blow — not to a leaning-against-it level, but certainly enough to cause the odd stumbling. It also wasn’t enough for the turbines over at the Makara Wind Farm to be switched off. The area’s full of high-tension power lines, and they make a major racket when the wind’s blowing through them to that extent.

Funnily enough, I notice that Erick Brenstrum recently wrote a short piece over on the Met Service Blog about ridge top winds, and how they operate.

I met the odd person coming down, but the presence of other people evaporated as I moved along the ridge. I eventually ended up at the junction to turn down to Chartwell Drive, and had to sit down behind a big rock for some relief by that point — seriously. Having just experienced some quite extreme wind, without even having crossed what is usually the windiest part of the ridge (ie. the saddle area between there and Bells’ Track), I decided that right now was the time to get down. I think the last time I’ve felt wind that strong was on the tops in the Ruahines a couple of years ago (despite them being about 4-5 times the elevation), and it wasn’t pleasant then either. It probably would have been possible to get over to Bells’ Track and get down that way without a serious incident, but in this particular case I’m using the word “probably” in its most literal sense and it didn’t seem worth the gamble. And so I followed the track down to the top of Chartwell Drive, with a violent wild tail-wind pushing me along for the first hundred metres or so before I was properly into sheltered space, after which everything returned to normality — the most fierce wind now being channelled some distance above.

It was a worthwhile couple of hours’ walk, in the end, albeit very windy in places. I even managed to stop to grab a few groceries on the way home, which seems to’ve shown up in the map since I’m slack about removing these details.

What surprised me as I walked back towards town was the number of bottle caps washed up on that part of the beach around there. There were barely any plastic bottles, but there were thousands of bottle caps. They were typically the variety that comes from soft drinks and bottled water, the latter of which I think is a bizarre, inefficient and pointless thing in New Zealand, but perhaps that’s a topic for another post.

I suppose the bottles must separate and be carried somewhere else with a different make-up and density, but apparently thousands of bottle caps end up right here. Putting thoughts about lazy thoughtless polluters and the hypocrisy of New Zealand aside, I’d love to know more about the physics of what’s happening here.

It’s just around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around. And that’s only the first half of it. I can’t say I’ve ever experienced this when walking in the outdoors.

It’s the first Kaka I’ve seen since one about 6 months ago around Cone in the Tararuas (not counting a visit to Kapiti Island), and only the second that I’ve spotted near Central Wellington. It’s one of the great effects of having the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary just down the road.

I’ve never lived in Auckland and it’s not a place I know much about, but I was very surprised to discover that it’s not actually legal to walk over the Auckland Harbour Bridge. After all, if it’s illegal to cross the bridge without a vehicle then it seems like a very long way to walk between St Mary’s Bay and Northcote Point. Google Maps tells me that it turns a 7.1 km walk straight over the bridge into an estimated 12.5 hour 60.8 km walk, complete with warnings from Google Maps about possibly not having adequate footpaths along the way! Perhaps someone with a better knowledge of Auckland could confirm if this is accurate? It seems very strange, though. Several other bridges that come to my mind all have free walking routes — these being the Sydney Harbour Bridge (in Sydney), the Brooklyn Bridge (in New York), and the Manhatten Bridge (also in New York). Not having something similar for an iconic bridge in a place such as Auckland seems to be a confounding oversight!

The whole thing reminds me of a few years ago. The day after I finished writing up my Masters’ Thesis I had nothing else to do at university except turn up to my office and stare blankly at the wall for 16 hours, but instead I decided to just start walking towards the Hutt Valley for as long as I could before either getting bored or exhausted. This went well until I neared Petone, walking along the cycle lane that’s embedded in a thin strip between State Highway 2 and the railway line, and therefore I think many Wellington cyclists would be familiar with this area. After about 6 km of straight walking between Ngauranga towards Petone, the barrier between the cycle way and the road disappeared and final 400 metres of this cycle-way was fully open to high speed traffic, and not at all well conditioned for walking on.

I suppose cyclists are used to this kind of thing, but I certainly wasn’t and standing on the edge of a crash barrier with nowhere to run if a high speed vehicle gets too close is very unnerving. I certainly wasn’t going to turn around and walk all the way back to Wellington, though. I managed to cross the barrier in the middle of State Highway 2 and caught an old lady turning out of Horokiwi Road, who neglected to ask me what I was doing but happily offered to give me a ride to wherever I was going. She didn’t seem to understand the concept of me only wanting to get a ride for the 400 metres which I couldn’t comfortably walk, so I just told her I was on my way to Petone.

Straight after that incident, the whole thing just felt wrong to me. There shouldn’t be places where it’s possible to drive but not safely walk. The only feasible way I can think of to walk to Petone without walking along that road would be to head out towards Johnsonville or Newlands and somehow get through Belmont Regional Park, which is ridiculous when there’s such a direct route. It’s a double tragedy that the stretch of coast between Ngauranga and Petone would make a truly awesome walkway if it were able to be developed as such. It’d be one of those walkways that’s fantastically sunny in good weather and would get fantastically thrashed by exciting waves in bad weather. Presently, however, it’s nothing more than a metropolitan railway line and commuter highway to shunt workers between Lower Hutt and Central Wellington.

Another area in Wellington which I think could be vastly improved for walking is the coast-line along-side Pauatahanui Inlet.

I grew up near here, and every so often I end up in the area. A couple of years ago I came out of Belmont Regional Park on provincial SH58, walked around to Pauatahanui, spent half an hour browsing through the Wildlife Reserve, then began to make my way back towards Paremata to hop on a train home as it got dark. The problem, which I hadn’t expected, was that the coastal road around Pauatahanui Inlet is nothing more than a road, and there’s virtually zero space for walking between the open road and a steep drop-off into the harbour. Despite having a reasonable torch, I spent more than an hour crawling along the edge of the road, hugging the crash barrier and often clinging to the harbour side of it for protection every time a car sped around a corner. As soon as I found an opportunity, I ducked into Whitby and walked triple the distance simply to get away from such an awful un-walkable road. It’s a shame, because this could be an awesome walk around a beautifully scenic part of Porirua Harbour. As it is, it’s an uneasy potential death-trap for anyone who chooses not to shield themselves in a vehicle.

I generally think of the Wellington region as being extremely walkable and for that I’m proud of it, especially compared with some of the alternatives in New Zealand and around the world. It still has its share of places that could be improved, however. As for people who like walking and cycling in Auckland, well if the situation is as it seems then I hope they eventually get their access route over the harbour bridge. Being required to own and use a car simply to access the most obvious and shortest-by-an-order-of-magnitude route from A to B is really sucky.

For outsiders, the obvious nearby recreation area is Egmont National Park, which has the usual range of back-country huts and trees and mountain scenery. Within New Plymouth, however, there are a lot of places where it’s possible to go walking.

In the last few years, New Plymouth’s waterfront area has been renovated to make a 7 km coastal walkway. It’s a good walk in the sunshine, but if you have warm clothes and a decent raincoat, I personally think it’s an even better walk being thrashed by the waves and salt spray of the Tasman Sea crashing every few seconds, keeping in mind that there are safety advisories for walking some parts of it when the weather is too rough. It stretches from the outlet of the Waiwhakaiho River (near Lake Rotomanu which is another nice short walk) on the eastern end to the Port of Taranaki on the western end, passing the town centre at the mid-way point. I included some notes about walking along the Waiwhakaiho River in an earlier post.

On the other side of the town centre, a few minutes from the coast, is on of the entrances to Pukekura Park, which in another town might be referred to as Botanic Gardens. The park exists around several recreational lakes and includes some good short walks. It’s a good place to visit to kill time, or to sit down and read a book. The main gate is near town, but the park reaches quite deep back into suburbia, which makes it a nice route to walk in. It’s actively looked after by volunteers as well as the local council (I’m presuming). The Friends of Pukekura Park have a website which is somewhat more descriptive than the local council.

Half a kilometer away from Pukekura Park, the Te Henui Walkway is another very nice way to walk from the suburbs into the town centre. It’s a river-side walk which follows the Te Henui river under the trees, through picnic areas, and eventually out to the Coastal Walkway east of the town centre.

Lake Mangamahoe from the main
lookout point at the northern end.

On this visit, I also went out to see Lake Mangamahoe for the first time, which is a 5 minute drive south of New Plymouth along State Highway 3. Lake Mangamahoe is New Plymouth’s main water supply, but it has a very nice walk around its edge. The walk is labelled as taking 2 hours, although it’s easily do-able in less or more depending on conditions and preferences. There’s a road subjected to pot-holes along the entire western side of the lake, with a carpark at each end.

The lake has a lot of bird life.

It was raining when I arrived, and if I’d planned I would have been wearing shorts because although it’s a nice walking track, some of it involves wading through long grass which quickly transfers a lot of water when it’s walked through. Apart from wet trousers and water-filled sneakers, however, the walk was really nice. Perhaps due to the rain, nobody else was visiting at the time except for a couple of people on mountain bikes, who quickly disappeared to the nearby mountain biking area.

I like the rain, and I enjoy walking through it. It brings out an atmosphere of a place which is often missed if one only ventures outside in hot and sunny weather.

Looking towards Mt Taranaki/Egmont from the northern end.
It’s a wonderful view, with or without the mountain back-drop.

The Kaiwharawhara Stream is one of the main water catchments flowing into Wellington Harbour, and it’s named after the suburb of Kaiwharawhara, where it finally exits into Wellington Harbour. It collects most of its water from around Karori and (especially after joining with the Korimako Stream) from many of the western suburbs of Wellington below Mt Kaukau. Its path through that part of Wellington is quite diverse. Some parts of the stream have a mildly remote feel to them, whereas others are heavily affected by built-up areas and the engineering projects that have caused it to be diverted and re-routed. Walking along it is a joining-the-dots exercise that I’ve wanted to do for a few months, and I’ve been waiting for a convenient time. Ultimately I found several places where it was impossible to follow because it was piped underground for long distances. In several places the stream had no formed track, and I gave up on following it directly once it seemed unlikely that it’d go anywhere except into another underground tunnel.

Date: 22nd November, 2008
Location: Wellington’s Western Suburbs, from Karori Wildlife Sanctuary to Kaiwharawhara.
People: Just me.
[Photos]

The main part of the catchment starts well up within the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary. There’s a charge to get into the sanctuary, and I’m also not 100% certain how accessible the stream is, so I instead decided to begin from just outside the sanctuary where the stream enters the free world. Note that I’ve put a lot more photos directly in this article than I usually do, because I think the photos tell much of the story of the changes in the stream from beginning to end.

The Sanctuary Fence Track
crossing of Waiapu Road.

The easiest way to the stream from near the front of the sanctuary on Waiapu Road is via the Sanctuary Fence track, which crosses Waiapu Road and heads straight down to the stream. The track itself meanders for a few metres, but then heads straight up the other side of the valley. I tried following the stream itself for about 100 metres, but it soon became clear that this was a place where not many people went, and I didn’t really want to keep going on my own, especially with it beingvery likely that the streem would reach a tunnel underneath a steep bank, and I’d have no recourse except to re-trace my steps and climb back to the road where I began. Gaiters would have been very handy in this area. I didn’t quite go back up the path I came down, but instead followed a steep route up the side where it looked as if people had been before, and ended at a miscellaneous-looking manhole cover next to a power pole on the road not far from where I started.

This was about as close as I got
to the front of the
Karori Wildlife Sanctuary.

First views of the Kaiwharawhara Stream

The stream gets more overgrown
as it gets further from the sanctuary.

Where I emerged after crawling back
up the bank to Waiapu Road.

Wandering back to Birdwood Street, which crosses the valley through which the Kaiwharawhara River flows, I looked for any sign of a stream below, but I couldn’t see any. Turning around, appeared as if the stream must be getting piped for quite some distance because standing at the lowest point in the valley, all that was around was a grassy field. Judging by the surrounding hills, if the stream was visible it would have carried on down into a valley between Chaytor Street (the main route up to Karori) and Curtis Street (towards Wilton). There are houses in the valley but there wasn’t any obvious way down via any public route to look for a stream after a reasonable look on both sides.

From previous experience I knew that the Kaiwharawhara Stream flows through Otari Wilton’s Bush, on the far side of Ian Galloway Park, so I made my way towards there in the hope that I might be able to back-trace the stream when I found it. For the entire length of Ian Galloway Park, no stream was visible although I thought for a moment that there might have been a waterway in a ditch between the sports fields and the Karori Cemetary, which reaches right down the hill to the edge of the park. At best there were only marginally damp swampy areas though, which might act as some kind of minor waterway when it’s raining.

I think the stream is directed somewhere
deep underneath all this grass…

…and then under all this asphalt, next to
the Karori Garden Centre…

…before being routed underneath a
rather large sports field…

…and deep below the lower reaches of the
historic and extensive Karori Cemetary…

…before finally emerging at the
edge of Otari Wilton’s Bush.

Otari Wilton’s Bush begins on the northern end of Ian Galloway Park, and it begins with a further descent down to the stream. I finally heard the stream to the left of the track after a drop of about 20 vertical metres, and pushed through the trees to find it finally coming out of the tunnel. I guess the stream has been piped deep underground for that entire distance, which must be on the order of about 1.5 kilometres.

Now that it’s emerged from underground, the Kaiwharawhara Stream follows an open route along the length of Otari Wilton’s Bush. The path along this section is wide and flat and and easy to walk, although it’s possible to walk up the hill to Churchill Drive in Wilton, or otherwise to cross the stream and follow some of the less graded tracks up the hill on the other side which eventually lead to such interesting places as the Skyline Walkway. Being specifically interested in the Kaiwharawhara Stream on this occasion, though, I continued to follow it out the other end of Otari Wilton’s Bush to the parking area opposite a street called Blackbridge Road. It’s at this point that the Kaiwharawhara Stream once again heads into a pipe, although this time it’s only to go underneath the road.

Typical walking along the base
of Otari Wilton’s Bush.

More typical walking along the base
of Otari Wilton’s Bush.

The main barbecue area alongside the
Kaiwharawhara River.

Vanishing opposite Blackbridge Road.

…and it comes out somewhere
down there.

Unfortunately, there’s not much on the other side of that road in the way of nicely graded walking tracks. It’s possible to push through long grass and climb down to the place where the stream once again emerges, and for a while I considered trying to follow the stream-bed in its north-eastish direction. The stream-bed is quite overgrown and its full of slippery brown rocks. If it were a regular tramping trip it’d probably be the sort of thing that could be followed easily, but once again I wasn’t really in the mood, especially since I knew it was likely to head straight into another tunnel without much pedestrian access after a few hundred metres.

The Kaiwharawhara Stream emerging
below Blackbridge Road.

So, after climbing back up to the road, going on a quick detour up towards Crofton Downs and deciding it was less and less likely to find a route back down to the river, I walked back and around to the Wilton side where prior experience told me that I could get back down to the Kaiwharawhara Stream via Wellington’s Northern Walkway. Specifically, I followed the road to the end of a street called Hanover Street, and entered the region known as Trelissick Park — the next main area that encompasses the waterway. By this point, the route has crossed the Johnsonville Railway Line (which followed a tunnel somewhere underneath Hanover Street), and somewhere further along, the Kaiwharawhara Stream emerges from another pipe underneath the railway line.

Looking over the Johnsonville Railway
Line from Hanover Street.

Back at the Kaiwharawhara Stream, now
much fuller thanks to the contribution
of the Korimako Stream.

Walking down from Hanover Street, the path very quickly crosses the stream and continues on its true left, but rather than follow it straight away I decided to go back up-stream and locate the point where it emerges from under the railway lines. This doesn’t take long to do, but it involves some reasonably steep climbing because the path diverges from the stream due to it becoming quite gorgey. A sign-post eventually points to a feature called the “fish ladder”. After about a minute of walking down-hill the path reaches the confluence of the Kaiwharawhara Stream (by now a small torrent that rushes out of a tunnel), and the Korimako Stream, which is the other main tributary from here on. A group from the Tararua Tramping Club visited that area last year and followed it up to Mt Kaukau, and briefly wrote about it, including at least one 200 metre torchlight procession through one of the underground sections.

Where the Kaiwharawhara Stream comes out
from under the railway line.

Looking down the Ngaio Gorge from the confluence.

Typical Kaiwharawhara Stream alongside
the Ngaio Gorge Track in Trelissick Park.

Trelissick Park is another very nice walking area, and the path alongside the Kaiwharawhara Stream, which soon becomes a track called the “Ngaio Gorge Track”, is well graded and easy to walk. Along here, the stream itself becomes a slightly deeper and meandering waterway that moves at a slower pace. Among the many people I met, many were walking dogs. The bird-life in the area was populous, and on one occasion I stood underneath two Tuis within a metre of me, who were having a noisy discussion about something for a good two minutes before they fluttered away to find somewhere else. Further along, a mallard duck was trying to coach her ducklings to swim against the current up the stream, but without much success.

Remains of the Kaiwarra Magazines.

A notable feature of this part of the stream is the remains of the Kaiwarra Magazines, which were concrete structures built in 1879 to store ammunition, supposedly so it wouldn’t have to be carted through town which had been becoming a concern. Since the army vacated the premises in the 1920s the buildings have been used for several other businesses including panelbeating and plastics manufacturing. The city council decided to restore one of the Magazines to its former glory in 2000, but near the end of this process it was burned to the ground following a bank robbery, after which the perpetrators used the nearly-restored building to hide and burn their stolen van. What remains are two stone skeletons have a lot of history. This is the last part of the journey where the Kaiwharawhara Stream is enhanced by relatively natural surroundings. From here on, it flows through Kaiwharawhara.

Kaiwharawhara is a reasonably industrial suburb, on the outskirts of Central Wellington. Its most known feature is Hutt Road, which is the main route out of town running parallel to the motorway. Being a long and wide road with lots of space to park cars, Hutt Road is a haven for businesses that don’t rely so much on impulse buying and foot-traffic. I think the most common kinds of shops on Hutt Road are furniture shops and especially bed shops, but there’s also the occasional car tow-away or mechanics business. I walked past at least one place with a sign out the front which proudly proclaimed “boxes sold here”.

The Kaiwharawhara Ditch, as
it enters Kaiwharawhara.

For the rest of its journey through Kaiwharawhara, the stream becomes more of a ditch between Kaiwharawhara Road, which follows into a traffic-light intersection with Hutt Road, and a collection of industrial businesses. It’s channeled under bridged driveways, eventually under Hutt Road between Spotlight and Beaurepaires for Tyres, both of which are reasonably large warehouse-style businesses that don’t provide a lot of space for walking next to the river ditch. The stream then flows underneath the bridged railway tracks and the motorway, and finally out to Wellington Harbour.

The final journey out to sea.

I hoped to find some kind of legal way to follow the stream all the way to the coast, but unfortunately I couldn’t. There’s no clear way over the railway tracks anywhere near the stream. Even if there was, there’s no clear way over the motorway. In a last ditch effort, I walked a kilometer up the road to the ferry terminal in the hope that there might be some way to get back along the harbour coast, but there wasn’t. It was all fenced off.

It’s an anti-climatic and largely uncelebrated ending for a water catchment that’s impressive in the amount of populated area that it covers, but not very well known in its entirety by many of the people who live around it.

Last views of an interesting waterway.

And that explains my walk. It ended up being quite a long day but it wasn’t especially strenuous, which I think is why I was able to handle it even after I didn’t fell up to a summit bagging trip we’d arranged for around Mt Ruapehu. I’ve been to most of these places before where it be in separate walks that crossed Otari Wilton’s Bush, or something like the Northern Walkway which visits Trelissick Park, but this was the first time I’d tried to walk the length of the stream just to see where it goes.

I’m not sure exactly what’s next in relation to this. It might be interesting to have a look in the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary to get a better idea of where the Kaiwharawhara Stream begins, and it might also be interesting to follow the Korimako Stream, which makes up a major part of the catchment. Whatever it is, I guess it’ll have to wait until I have another spare day.

The general idea is to just walk through suburbia, keeping reasonably close to bus routes and/or railway lines so it’s easy to bail out and go home whenever it’s convenient. I quite like doing this on occasion because it involves minimal organisation and it’s not necessary to arrange any special gear. Just some contingency money for a bit of food and public transport home is all. It’s also just quite a nice change from walking through the back-country, I think. Suburbia changes quite a lot as you walk through it (at least it does on this route), and I find it interesting wandering along the streets and watching things going on as the day progresses.

Date: 6th July, 2008
Location: Wellington suburbs (Northland, Johnsonville, Tawa, Porirua, Plimmerton).
People: Me.
Intended route: Start at Northland and walk north along suburban streets in the general direction of Kapiti, keeping near public transport.

After some lazing around at home, I left Northland just after 10am… specifically where I live, which is near Chesshire Street. I think it’s important to state the starting point reasonably accurately, because the trip time can probably vary by an hour or two depending on exactly where one might start from. Last time I did this several years ago I began from Kingston, which is on the southern end of central Wellington, and it took about an hour before I even reached where I began from today.

I followed Wilton Road and Churchill Drive, and after an hour’s walking I’d reached what I think was somewhere between about the Simla Crescent and Box Hill Railway Stations. Continuing along Burma Road, I turned off at Fraser Avenue, which is a less popular back road into the Johnsonville Shops. It’s in the district of the quarry above the Ngauranga Gorge, and there’s a reasonably narrow view out towards Matiu Somes Island in Wellington Harbour. I reached the Johnsonville Shops at 11.30am, and stopped for a quick lunch in the food court. After figuring out how to get around the various roads and roundabouts, I was finally walking along Middleton Road at 12pm.

After the last few houses near Johnsonville, there aren’t many landmarks along Middleton Road. About 20 minutes along (I think it was exactly 12.20pm), I reached the point where the Paraparaumu Train Line emerges from its second (and longest) tunnel. After this there was another 20 minutes of walking before Takapu Road Railway Station (12.40pm). There isn’t a pedestrian footpath along this stretch of road, but I generally found there was enough space on the edge for me to walk safely. There was only one short stint where I found myself hugging the crash barrier to let several cars drive past.

The main road through Tawa is just called ‘Main Road’, according to my street map, but I think it’s also called the Old Porirua Road. I was at the Tawa Shopping Mall by around 1pm (3 hours of walking so far, including lunch), and by 1.45pm was briefly sitting down opposite Porirua Railway Station for a quick bit of chocolate. Last time I did this, I found it quite difficult figuring out exactly where to go as a pedestrian to get through Porirua and out the other side. Ultimately it’s necessary to get to the eastern side of the motorway north of Porirua, and there are at least a couple of ways to get there. I think that if one crosses the motorway and railway line via the double-overbridge roundabout to get to the start of Mungavin Avenue, there’s a walking track that follows the road north on the eastern side from there. The way I chose this time, however, was to stick to the western side of the Porirua Stream (which drains into Porirua Harbour) until the northern-most motorway on/off-ramp. This has a cycle lane on the southern side, which can also be walked on (at least nobody tried to stop me), and leads straight into the walkway on the eastern side of the motorway north of Porirua.

By now I was starting to feel the beginnings of some blisters in my feet, which I guess could be a consequence of walking for so long on cemented footpaths, which I don’t do a lot of. I finally reached Plimmerton (ie. Opposite the railway station) at 3.10pm, just in time to see the 3pm train pull out 10 minutes late. For a while I was still considering the idea of continuing to walk around the coast to Pukerua Bay, but eventually decided not to since to do so it’s really necessary to commit to doing it properly given that the coastal track is away from public transport and (potentially) cellphone reception. Being the middle of winter with only a couple of hours of light left and not having given anyone clear indications of precisely where I was going, it seemed like a good idea to avoid the risk of getting stuck there. I consoled myself by buying an ice cream, going for a quick walk along the beach, and hopping on a train back home.

In conclusion it was quite a good walk to fill in some time – roughly 5 hours from Northland (near Wellington) to Plimmerton. I think if I’d wanted to make it to Pukerua Bay, I probably would have needed to leave an hour or two earlier, or otherwise go in the summer when days are longer. Perhaps I’ll try to remember to do that next time, which admittedly might be a few more years away.

We heard the news on returning that Parahaki Hut (in the Uruweras) burned down, apparently due to some kind of gas bottle accident, and took a couple of fishermen with it. The hut was supposedly scheduled for removal anyway so presumably won’t be replaced, but it’s really sad when it happens this way.

I didn’t have time for any tramping in Taranaki this time, or even serious daywalks, but I did go for a wander around some of the walks in New Plymouth. The main one worth talking about was probably my attempts to follow the Waiwhakaiho River out to the sea on Boxing Day (26th December).

The Waiwhakaiho River flows around the eastern side of the main centre of New Plymouth, and after beginning at Merrilands, I was quite keen to see how easy it would be to walk alongside the river out to the sea. It turned out that it wasn’t really possible to walk directly alongside the river for most of the time, and for much of it it was necessary to walk around the suburban streets above, but I suppose now I know. Actually, the rest of this post is likely to be fairly boring unless you’re after a description of trying to walk alongside that river for some reason, and I’m also writing it from a perspective of someone who doesn’t know New Plymouth very well. Otherwise it’s probably a good idea to stop reading right now.

I began on Mangorei Road. Armed with a basic fold-out street map of New Plymouth, my first mistake was to walk up Boulevard Drive. It’s a short dead-end street, but on the map it looked as if it got quite close to the river, and perhaps there would be some kind of access point through the properties at the end. There wasn’t. I back-tracked, and continued a short distance further north along Mangorei Road until I reached a sports field on the eastern side, which I think is called Merrilands Domain. The road along the right hand side of this field is open to vehicles during the day, and at the back right corner of the field, the road continues on a windy path down to the river, where there’s actually a parking area. Apparently it’s a popular swimming hole, to the extent that there was even a council sign advising people to enjoy their swimming. I’m not certain, but I think this may have been the place where a chap was tragically swept away and drowned on the previous day. There had been a lot of rain in Taranaki during Christmas Day and the river would have been flooded.

Finally being at the river, I made an attempt to follow it. Unfortunately, the easy walk alongside the meadow that bordered the car park quickly turned into an overgrown experience of thick, wet grass. People had obviously pushed their way through here before, but it didn’t go any further than the river’s edge. I met a group of four locals who were checking the river for fishing opportunities, and unsuccessfully looking for eels, which apparently visit that area from time to time. It looked as if edge of the river very quickly turned into steep cliffs, and after asking them they confirmed that it wasn’t possible to walk alongside the river from there. I briefly considered the idea of getting my feet wet, but I didn’t really have the right gear to do it properly, and I was also on my own without having told anyone specifics of where I was going, plus the river looked quite fast and inconsistently deep in places.

Pushing back to the field near the parking area, it looked as if there was a steep track going almost straight up the hill-side. This would have been about the only hill-walking I managed to get during this trip to Taranaki, which is largely flat if you happen to ignore that ~3000 metre high mountain in the middle. The track was very steep and slippery in places, and for a few minutes I hoped that it might lead over the top of the cliffs above the river. Unfortunately it didn’t, and within 10 minutes I found myself at the opposite back corner of the sports field at which I’d begun.

Not having had any luck at my first attempt to find my way to the river, I re-started my navigation of the suburban streets, examining every street on the right hand side for signs of new tracks leading towards the Waiwhakaiho River. With some continued effort, I eventually found a street-track through the back roads via Hawea Street, Waiwera Place (advertising itself as New Plymouth’s “Best kept street in 2003/04, I think), via a footpath over to Turakina Street, and eventually over to Riversdale Drive via Kennedy Place.

I’d already been going some distance, but hadn’t yet discovered a (legal) way down to the Waiwhakaiho River that would allow me to walk alongside it. I was hoping to find something along Riversdale Drive, though, and sure enough there were a couple of apparently empty sections on the eastern side, a short distance after the turn-off to Lindaver Grove. The first of these had a sign at the back which announced nothing except the penalty for dumping rubbish over the bank. The second, which was only a minute or two after the first, had a track leading off the back of it. The track connected with some farm-land and from here I was finally able to cross a fence, with the help of one of those fence crossing step things (which to me implied that it was legal), onto what seemed to be a 4 wheel drive track running alongside the river.

The track continued north above the river for some distance and eventually I started hitting some industrial-like buildings built between the track and the river. Before the first of these, there was a side track which I followed down to the river’s edge, and was encouraged after seeing someone else’s footprints in the sand. From here I was able to push myself through some very overgrown vegetation right next to the river bed. After about 5 minutes of this and going quite slowly with uncertain footing, however, I looked ahead and noticed that the river up ahead was meeting the cliff faces again, and that it was unlikely I’d get anywhere. Presumably that track had simply been another way down to another swimming hole.

Returning to the 4 wheel drive track, it very quickly reached the dead-end road called Rimu Street, with the most obvious first building being a large warehouse type of building carrying a sign declaring that it belonged to the Destiny Church (ugh). I kept following Rimu Street for a short distance, and then turned off along an un-named street which continued near the river. This whole area would probably be prime real-estate overlooking the river if it was built on today, but as it happened it was an industrial zone. I guess it made sense historically to locate industrial properties near a river, which would have made it easier to dump waste. After this, a track began which led under a railway bridge and a road bridge (Devon Street), then past a collection of netball courts before I eventually found myself having to back-track and wander up Raiomiti Street to get around more river-side cliffs. From here I followed Clemow Road all the way to the suburb of Fitzroy, and was a little surprised to discover that it didn’t actually flow into Lake Rotomanu, but bypassed the lake completely. So I continued around the lake (between the lake and the river) to reach the sea, and followed the coastal walkway back to the centre of town.

It was a bit disappointing not to have been able to properly follow the river out to the sea, but I guess now I know for next time and it was an interesting way to spend a few hours. If I try a similar thing in the future, I might try to figure out if I can walk along the other side of the river.