Woodhill Diary

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Saturday 23 September 2006

Well, what with visits to the Waitakeres etc, it's been longer than I expected since I last hit Woodhill.

Surprise. Notwithstanding Andrea's (CHH recreation officer) estimate that September would see them sorted again, not one visible piece of work has been done towards re-establishing walking tracks.

I still had to bash my way through pampas and fallen trees along the Rope Course boundary, and I still had to detour round a blocked walking track about 100 m up the hill beyond the Rope Course.

I think it might be worth phoning Andrea again and finding out the terms under which management of Woodhill Forest walking tracks passed to Bikeparks. There would presumably have been some kind of management plan submitted. About three weeks ago I emailed Bikeparks to see what information I could get, and to date nobody has bothered to reply to my email.

Once I got past that lot, there was still more hard work ahead - about three or four hundred metres of this to bash across.

From there, another few hundred metres of 4WD bike track along the edge of the cutover bit got us to Selwyn Rd, and a few more hundred metres along Selwyn Rd got us to the Conservation Area gate. A total of just over 2 km from the car before I even got started on the walk proper. There has to be a better way.

If I could get management ceded to AWEC, (if they want it) that would at least be a start, as horses and trampers have a good deal more forest in common than mountain bikes and trampers who just cannot occupy the same forest safely.

The conservation area could do with someone trekking through with a chain saw and a machete to deal to fallen trees and vegetation almost completely across the track in many places.

On the positive side, a couple of grey warblers dancing almost like fantails near the intersection with Walkers Rd was a delight. The Woodhill warblers do have a "local call" quite different from those at Albany and from the Taupo Western Bays birds.

A karo dusted with pine pollen is in full bloom near the gate of the Conservation Area.

There's not a lot in the way of seasonal change evident as I make my way up to the Old Lookout, though just past it is a wonderful flowering rangiora: (The only trees in flower are those of a reasonable size. Juveniles do not seem to flower.)

The kawakawa, which was just beginning to flower a month ago when I was in is now in full swing.

The hangehange is a little ahead of the ones in the Waitaks.

Ther big kowhai at the southern end of the walk are in full bloom

and the ground is covered in yellow petals. I'm not sure what's causing this highly local colour variation in the kawakawa:

Alice is showing no signs of tiring,and is going just as hard at the end of seven kilometres as at the beginning. She chooses a nap when we get home, though, in preference to playing with the kids down the drive.

We head up as far as the New Lookout, and then straight back down to Selwyn Rd, and across more rubbish back to the car.

I'll keep you posted, but at this stage, of a 7 k walk we did today, about 2/3 of it is cutover bush-bashing, and with the best will in the world, that kind of maths is not my thing at all.