News and media
Urban Te Araroa track opens
Footprints in Sand
by Geoff Chapple
© NZ Herald
A year ago I walked North Shore City's coastline from Long Bay on down, starting an hour before low tide. It was a tide-dependent route, across the sandy beaches, around the sometimes slippery rock of the headlands, and I waded the last bit through to Cheltenham Beach hip-deep in the tide.
This time, there was no hurry, and no need to get my feet wet. Te Araroa Trust and North Shore City have now signed through an all-tide walking
route, due to open on Sunday November 21. It's an urban trail, that links the city's existing clifftop walks with the main beaches, many of
the parks, and the prettiest streets, from Long Bay through to a ceremonial rock now set in place at Windsor Reserve, Devonport.
That rock was my destination as I headed steeply uphill from Long Bay on the first of the new trail's clifftop paths, humming a snippet from the
poem that will be cast in bronze and set into that rock to mark the trail's opening - 'The
Shore' by C.K. Stead.
Footprints in sand, a light wind at the door,
Tides, ferries, the bridge, and always islands . .
Well exactly. Immediately beyond Long Bay the track reaches its highest point - 40 metres above sea level - and I paused for the view. Gulls hung on the updraft, and way out to sea a ship was eerily adrift above the visible horizon. Between the two, lay the winking gulf and its islands. Rangitoto was its usual sombre-coloured self, and misshapen from this viewpoint, but the sun shone and it was a good day.
Rubbish collection day. This was an urban walk, and my second suburban linkl road, Rewi Street, was lined with bulging orange bags. A Waste
Management truck moved into the street. The big truck lagged sometimes just behind me, moved sometimes just ahead.
Before I started this walk, one of my friends, an urban walker from way back, took me by the shoulders and told me I had to dismiss the
idea that this walk was just another long tramp. Urban walking - 'strolling' she said meaningfully - was very psychological. The urban stroller would remain attentive to the lives of those he passed. Like any good novelist he would invent narratives from the fragmentary conversations he overheard. He would note the status display of the citizens and their houses, whether subtle or strident. He would note how the people dress, and behave.
Okay, so the dusties running alongside the rubbish truck wore practically nothing, and hurled the orange bags. Moreover, the passing and repassing of the diesel exhaust was gradually airbrushing me black, but when the truck turned off, I actually missed its filthy company.
The suburbs were now quiet. The odd whine of a circular saw. The banging in of a nail. Here and there the gentle opening or shutting of a ranch
slider, a woman with a baby in her arms, turning away behind glass. At 8.45 am, the streets were already warm, and heavy with the scent of flowers. Around me now too, exposed in the gullies, was what my friend called the urban forest, lush in these parts, many of them natives, but a profusion of exotics - the purple-flowering lilac tree, the bristling red bottlebrush, the pink toon tree, the aspiring Norfolk pine . . .
I walked Sharon Road, watching for an extraordinary sight I'd first spotted in this vicinity from my previous tidal walk - a lap pool with a
glass end, protruding over the crumbling cliffs between Torbay and Browns Bay - but saw only the back of post-modern mansions astride the
headland.
A woman called from behind a high paling fence: "Do you want some biccies? Come here. Come here. Good girl." And en passant - for the sophisticated urban stroller should never actually stop and stare -
through the flickering gaps of the fence and its entwined roses, I saw a whippet suddenly grabbed and held for the kind of vigourous hosedown
which no amount of biscuit will ever be recompense. And as I descended the Lotus Walk to Browns Bay, I heard the final faint unfolding of the dogwash drama "Delilah ! DELILAH ! Come BACK here."
So to the first cup of coffee, and the plundering of the water cooler at the Ocean Breeze Cafe, Browns Bay. On past the sewer upgrade at the end
of the bay, to the Clifftop walkway and steep steps where a woman jogger passed me three times, running up, then down, then back up sideways as you might ascend with skis on a steep snow slope.
Beyond Rothesay Bay, I linked to the longest headland walk en route, the Gumdiggers Trail. On this wonderful path the cabbage trees held out
candelabra-shaped flowerheads across the track, and the cliff-edge was fringed with native trees, flax, and flowers. Here I heard my first tui, and dozens of walkers passed by, nodding a morning greeting, women mostly, often in twos or threes, locked into happy gossip.
"I met him for the first time in years last weekend. 'Rob are you married? Do you have kids?" And he gets really sniffy. 'Stop trying to
get into my head."
So to View Road, and Possum Ladder, a verdant tunnel, fenced either side and planted with fat red roses, descending finally on the council's new
staircase to Campbells Bay. Then along Kennedy Park's clifftop, with Rangitoto now gradually assuming a more classical shape, and walking
through to the old earthworks of the Rahopara Pa, and down to Castor Bay.
To Milford Beach and the two-kilometre walk around to Takapuna. The issue with owners between the two beaches who have title down to the mean high water mark, seems resolved now, partly through their
generosity, partly through the forcing pressure of customary useage. North Shore City Council includes this section in its Heritage Walk, and an accompanying brochure lists architectural sites that range from original cottages to late-modernist architecture. Here too, a flow of lava once poured across an ancient forest, leaving from felled or
standing trees long since rotted out, the hollow imprints of their trunks in the rock.
At Takapuna it was 12.20 pm, lunch-hour. The office crowd was down on the vbeach with its trousers rolled or its skirts hiked, and I stopped to
buy a hamburger and a pair of sunglasses. On to Narrow Neck and Cheltenham, though until the council joins a few more coastal dots, and
takes this 3-kilometre link closer to the sea, this section remains predominantly a road walk.
At Cheltenham Beach the present marked route directs you down Cheltenham Road but in the the not-too-distant future the Coastal Walk is likely go round the base of North Head. At the moment, the North Head track goes just three-quarters of that distance. A Devonport citizen group is negotiating its completion with clifftop landowners who have property rights across the unfinished section to mean high water mark, and this track, with yachts ghosting past, with the old gun emplacements, and the metropolitan skyline appearing suddenly through a screen of pohutukawa trees, will be exactly the final jewel needed to complete a memorable
23-kilometre walk through North Shore City.
So it's what I did - picked my way past DoC 's 'Warning - No Access' sign and security fence, walking carefully onward below the mean high
water mark, and out through the Navy's boat yards. And so along King Edward Parade to Devonport, so to pat the ceremonial rock, so to finish the route
in an unhurried six and a half hours, and to raise a glass at the Esplanade Hotel to the impending opening of what will become, I suspect, one of metropolitan Auckland's most popular long walks.
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Allison Roe will open the North Shore City Coastal walk at 9 am on Sunday November 21 at Windsor Reserve Devonport, and at 9.30 am will
lead a walk through to Takapuna where there'll be a sausage sizzle and music at the Strand from 11 am to 1 pm. If you don't join the Devonport - Takapuna walking group, you're welcome to walk in to the Strand from any part of the trail, north or south, and from 11 am onward, join a celebration of walking.
The Coastal walk is four-season and a high standard throughout, aside froma couple of fairly easy rocky scrambles south of Thornes Bay. Wear a hat and take water.
Transport -
Fullers Auckland operates regular ferries between Auckland and Devonport. For timetable information call 09 367 9102 or go to www.fullers.co.nz. Stagecoach Auckland runs regular bus services between Auckland, Takapuna, and Long Bay. For bus timetable information phone Rideline 09 366 6400 or go to www.rideline.co.nz
Trail information -
Takapuna City Council will have brochures available soon. A brochure and map is also available on Te Araroa Trust's website. Go to www.teararoa.org.nz and press the maps button.
