A Life on the Edge: A Waikato long weekend

New Plymouth Coastal Cycleway

I had been trying to get to Hamilton to drop off a whole lot of photos for nearly year. Each time I had a plan to do so either work work interfered or a lockdown would interfere.

Now that Omicron was in the community the country was open and the only thing stopping us from doing things was fear of catching it. We decided that Queen's Birthday Weekend was a good one for travelling and that we would travel to Hamilton via New Plymouth (Oakura) leaving on Thursday so that we kept out of the madness of leaving the capital and getting caught in tail back at Otaki.

We left a bit later than intended. It was raining but squeaky windscreen wipers made for a less than pleasant drive. We stopped for lunch at Otaki before driving to Oakura through New Plymouth. It was dark and damp when we arrived but we managed to stay dry getting into our AirBnB accommodation.

After a glass of wine and having heated up the place a bit we went down to the beach to a pizza place we had seen on an earlier visit when we had tried to eat but it was fully booked out. The food and setting was wonderful but the dark of the night meant no nice view of the sea beyond.

The next day we took ourselves down to the beach as the rain held off and in fact there was a little sun around making it very pleasant. Bev is taking a little teddy around where she takes photos of him in the places we visit. Afterwards it was a quick visit to the petrol station for relatively cheap petrol (at least better than some other places) before having a little stop looking along the coastal path for another photo opportunity. The sun remained out making it very pleasant.

The journey took us along the coast, over Mt Messenger (there is tunnel you go through) to Mokau where we stopped briefly to take a photo. It is very rugged and beautiful along that coast. It is probably more than two decades since I traveled that coast.

We called into Piopio to visit the toilets and noted how wet it had been, with flooding still apparent.

Flooding in Piopio

Part of the purpose of the trip was to call in on my 101 year old aunt. We spent a wonderful couple of hours with Ngaere, who despite her fraility, was still sharp and living alone in her house of forty or so years.

We then headed to Hamilton to spend a couple of nights with my sister Lois and her husband John. They were very good hosts and we drank some wine and caught up on what we had been doing over the past few months.

Saturday dawned cold and clear. I was not feeling the best and had been to the doctor before coming up to Hamilton. While there I got a message to say that due to some of the medication I was taking my electrolytes were out of balance so needed to drop the amount I was taking. The consequence of that was that my energy levels were not so good and I was unsure as to how far I could ride. Fortunately for the most part the route was fairly flat although it was no so flat the closer we got to Cambridge at which point, much to Bev's disappointment I said I was unwilling to ride much further.

A glance at the might Waikato

We retraced our steps and then went into the Botanic Gardens which is close to Lois and John's and spent an hour or so exploring a number of the special gardens. There were a couple of new special gardens that had been developed since I lived in Hamilton. It really is a wonderful asset that the city has developed.

The next day we packed up the car and drove to Karangahake Gorge where we planned to do a bike ride along the path that goes from Paeroa to Waihi. The weather was rather chilly (not surprising since it was June) and overcast with a bit of moisture threatening. It is nice easy bike ride and the only glitch was the lack of somewhere decent to eat when we got to Waihi. We found some food but not quite what I wanted.

After we returned to Karangahake, we drove to Pauanui to stay with our friends who have retired there. It rained for much of the time that we were there. We had a little outing in the pouring rain for a coffee then went out for dinner that night. We spent the afternoon watching TV, the film CODA which was on Apple TV. Everyone except me managed to have a nap.

Fortuitously, the next day it had cleared and we had a nice run back to Wellington. We covered quite a bit of ground during the weekend but it was a lot of fun and it was nice traveling again.