Woodhill Diary

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Sunday 20 August 2006

After I'd done my nearly 7 km stint yesterday, Dan emailed to suggest a Sunday walk at Woodhill. What could I say? It was an opportunity to grab the other half of the short loop track and see what that looked like.

If anything the early afternoon carpark was more crowded than yesterday. Travelling by car down the hill from the old carpark, I met seven vehicles coming my way. I decided I wasn't going to take on the hill today if I could avoid it and we hopped across the fence just to the left of the Rope Course and made our way up through some pampas that the cows had been through, and met the old walking track at the bottom of the hill. Since I was last here, someone's been through with a small earth mover and levelled out the canyon floor that used to be here. As we got near the top, however, we were met by a wall of chopped branches and we were obliged to make our way up the side of the path in order to skirt the rubbish.

We picked our way across towards Walker Rd. I noticed a host of small seedlings springing up everywhere. Lupin. And I'd never seen lupin here earlier - a few plants maybe.

They've possibly been sitting in the sand for years until a bit more light and a bit more moisture than usual started them all germinating.

Walker Rd has taken a hammering

The old tank that used to be across the road has been carefully lifted and resited, though I'm not certain what function it is supposed to serve.

Someone has carefully saved and stacked a whole bunch of 100mm tanalised posts behind the tank. In the middle of all this devastation it sounds a thoughtful note.

One thing Alice loves about the beach and the forest is the ease with which she can dig, and doesn't miss an opportunity. She's a little slower today after her big walk yesterday, but still covers considerably more ground than I do.

We make our way along the path edging the cutover area towards Selwyn Rd, then we right turn up the hill a way and then it's left up towards the lookout. The clouds from the lookout today are quite spectacular

We pause a while and then follow the track down the hill and into the Nature Conservancy just north of the lookout. We notice that the five finger growing all around the lookout, which was in robust good health a few months back has been hit by something that has left brown markings on the leaves and a generally sickly look to the plant.

The first part of the Nature Conservancy is scruffy, until we cross the small divide that separates east facing forest from west facing forest. We turn left at the big green sign pointing us to Rangatira Beach. I notice a few mingimingi with pink berries from last year, a change from the usual white in this part of the world, and the juvenile miro on the left a few hundred metres down is in excellent shape.

Of most interest for me, though are the first flowers coming out on the big wharangi along here. The leaves have a lovely spicy smell when they're crushed.

We look at our watches as it suddenly looks a lot darker, and realise we shall have to move it to get back to the carpark before lockup time. The lightly spitting rain proceeds to get heavier and we put cameras away and increase the length of our stride. We make it back with a quarter hour to spare, but thoroughly soaked. I collect a couple of pinecones on the way for Alice to chew on, having watched her at work earlier on the walk.

Miranda is cooking dinner tonight so I can relax properly when I get back. I check out the route on our map and we've done a fraction under 6km. And I don't feel sore or tired. I am thoroughly pleased with this progress, and thoroughly pleased with my hiking poles.