Thames and the Pinnacles.

I shall start off my three week trip by not starting it at off all but here’s an honorary mention to the trip which was the first attempt which I aborted after two nights because of illness:

I had ventured away from Auckland and for the first time found myself in a new town, Thames (pronounced Temz, like the English river), and able to explore as I pleased. My perambulation took me in a dead straight line along the main street which was full of shops with awnings, I liked the awnings, and the slanted parking spaces that oblige drivers to drive into forwards and reverse onto the road, this I didn’t like. At the end of the main street all of three minutes was taken up so I decided to make a ninety degree turn and walk down another dead straight road to the seafront where I made another ninety degree turn then sidestepped the dead straight seafront road so I could walk along the mangrove-clad seafront. The view was somewhat obscured by the mangroves but it turns out that there isn’t too much of a view over the Firth of Thames anyway so I turned my attention to a miniature railway that goes along the seafront in a vague figure of eight design and has quite an intricate station and goods yard layout, nice.

(The first and longest swing bridge (NZ), rope bridge (UK) on the Pinnacles ascent)

 

Thames is a small town best known for and basically exists because of gold. In 1867 a single flake of gold was discovered in a waterfall near Thames and within months the Thames gold rush began. This led to large scale mining, for its day, around Thames and caused the population to balloon to eighteen thousand people compared to a measly just under seven thousand people today. This also led to the creation of the 'Thames School of Mines and Mineralogical Museum' museum which I decided visit. Two more ninety degree turns and three more dead straight roads later and I was there.

Initially a Sunday school the School of Mines building was quite satisfyingly, in my opinion, converted from religious to educational purposes and the interior remains as it was when the school closed in 1953 and it looked and felt pretty much as I’d expect a Victorian school interior to look. Some of the rooms even looked capable of research into phlogiston. The mineralogical museum was rather well stocked and even had some specimens all the way from Cornwall. I could have spent all day staring at the mineral samples, especially galena, a shiny blue ore of lead that draws your attention almost as well as fire does, but people would think I was weird. I suppose I could have set the place on fire for a valid excuse to stare because everyone stares at fire but the police would probably arrest me for arson, damn.

 

(Some steps on the packhorse route)

My reason for staying in Thames was to ascend the Pinnacles. These are a set of peaks in the Coromandel Peninsula which although not the highest in the local area they have sufficient cragginess to make them stand out from the surrounding hills and still offer rather spectacular views. I drove up the gravel road to the start of the track and in the process had all the rust proof protective coating chipped off the underside of my car by small stones and then began the ascent. The track follows an old packhorse route up the mountain that supplied kauri tree loggers with supplies. The logging began in the 1870’s and they were so successful that by 1928 they had removed all they could and therefore put themselves out of work and destroyed native woodlands, well done. The summit was pretty cold and windy with poor visibility, pretty galling for the walk I had just done. I had the option of waiting to see if the weather would improve from this cold horizontal drizzle so I could have a good view or to head back down the mountain to comfy chairs and a heated TV room with a free DVD library. Needles to say three hours later I was eating chips in a comfy chair watching TVNZ 7. 

 (The pinnacles, shrouded in drizzle)

The Pinnacles walk was very enjoyable and if you like walking then I recommend it, it can be done easily as a day walk or you can stay in the hut near the summit overnight which offers enticements such as cold showers and people who might snore all night so I settled for staying in Thames instead. I decided to head back to Auckland the next day because I was feeling quite ill but before that I ended up watching ‘Death at a Funeral’ which is a light hearted British comedy, which is rather funny.

North Island trip.

This blog has been pretty quiet of late but all that is about to change. I have been travelling around the North Island for the last three weeks and in lieu of my own computer I have only been able to access public computers for half an hour or so or have had to pay as much as $2.00 for half an hour, but now I’m back in Auckland with a permanent internet connection.

The trip took me in a clockwise(ish) route around the North Island, I visited most of the main towns and travelled 3,154.7km (1,971.6miles) along some of the most boring and most interesting roads in the country. A map of where I travelled is below:

I shall update this blog in sections every few days and during this time you will hear about a railway that goes to nowhere in particular, why all goats should die, how to move a Cornish engine house over 300 metres whilst keeping it in one piece, the first thing you notice about Rotorua, wind turbines in Hawkes Bay that only blow air around, the suburb of Camborne which differs somewhat from the Camborne I’m so ‘dearly’ acquainted to in Cornwall, GTA imitation in Wanganui and many more exciting things that happened.

If you aren’t excited then you should be...

Piha and Kitekite waterfall.

There is a place called Piha on the coast west of Auckland region and this was my destination for the day. I set off on a course through the city which I had etched into my brain with many mental trial runs because when the road signs mostly don’t say where the roads go and every road looks pretty much identical to the next you need to know precisely where you are going. All was going well until I reached a roundabout, fine, you would have thought, they work to precisely the same rules and in the same direction as roundabouts in the UK which I have navigated happily and without incident for six years. But getting all a-posteriori about this, I have to say they’re pretty awful over here, New Zealand drivers don’t seem to know how to use them. When approaching a roundabout in the UK you scan all the entrance lanes and immediately you can tell which exit each driver is going to take when they are still fifty metres from the roundabout and 99% of the time you will be absolutely correct. The remaining one percent of drivers I shall quite presumptuously and unscientifically accuse of being Kiwi drivers on holiday in the UK. Anyway, I ended up sitting waiting to pull onto the roundabout, letting gaps go by and making attempts to pull out as people meandered their cars in front of mine. But eventually I made a successful break for freedom and left the driver behind me to make reason of the strange twirly thing in front of him.

There were no other roundabouts on the roads to Piha, this was good. The roads leave Auckland and head through the Waitakere ranges which border the urban extent of Auckland but despite this proximity they are very well forested and quite undeveloped, it’s not uncommon for people to go missing here and never be found. I don’t think there is a British equivalent to this, everywhere is too urban. I drove through the Waitakere’s sub-tropical flora and unlike the UK there were no little villages with post offices and naively presuming ‘Thank you for driving carefully though our village’ signs as you leave the village.

 (Piha Beach)

The road arrives in Piha at quite an altitude and I got several quite good millisecond views of Piha beach and Lion Rock as I guided my car down the steep winding road to the beach car park. I parked my car and began walking towards Lion Rock, this is a large stack raising roughly one hundred metres out of the beach and at every high tide it becomes an island. There is a path that climbs to the top and this was where I was aiming for, however, there was a river in the way, a deeper than the water proofing on my boots type river. Being too lazy to take my boots off and walk across, I found a narrow section, stared at it for a bit, took some steps back, narrowly avoiding walking into someone, took my run up and jumped. Thud. You didn’t think I wouldn’t make it did you? With my still dry feet I headed straight up Lion Rock. Unfortunately you can only climb half way up the rock because a land slip nearer the top makes it too dangerous to continue. It must be extremely dangerous for New Zealand to deem somewhere unsafe. I spent the rest of my time on the beach wondering where the original path went and never worked out where it could have gone, it must have been a big landslide! 

(Lion Rock, only partially climbable)

(The current path stops half way up the right hand side of this picture and the closed way up is somewhere in the picture above, I think I can see a 'path' but not a path)

There was a good view of Piha from half way up the rock, the houses were all spread out and based on some desultory plan. The town wasn't good on the eye from the outside but looking away from the town from within probably would be a good view, hence why people want to live there.

(Piha, a town with some houses in-between trees)

I decided to head back to the car now and go to the Kitekite waterfall in the hills behind Piha. This was a fairly easy ramble following a stream and it led to some good viewing locations of the falls. This was a pleasant walk through trees, the ubiquitous view-blocking trees of New Zealands 'scenic' areas, and was very relaxing. 

 (Trees)

All was well, then I heard the voices of people and children and they were getting louder and then they arrived and were being where I wanted to be and making noise! I moved on to the base of the falls and there were more people there, the worst kinds, children and whole family groups and they were having fun and taking pictures and laughing and splashing water and forcing me to politely stop through my own volition to avoid being in their pictures. Grrrrrrr. Why can’t they all go home and stop sharing the Waitakere’s with me, why! Maybe I should avoid coming here on the first day of the school holidays to avoid slight irritation next time. The falls were quite impressive, they weren’t a single drop but six distinct steps where the water runs over the rocks. When the area was logged a dam was built at the top of the falls to contain enough water to release and wash logs down to the base of the waterfall. This was a common practise to transport logs but at Kitekite this was met with mostly broken logs, I can see why, and they never used it for the same purpose again. 

 

(Kitekite falls)

I headed back to my car along the longest section of wooden steps in the whole world and drove back home though Auckland. Not via a roundabout this time.