Woodhill Diary

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Sunday 31 December 2006

With a free morning today, but not much more I couldn't fit in a Waitakeres track, so I decided to spend the morning catching up on the Woodhill Walking Track scene in a little more detail than my brief visit a few days back.

If I have in the past suggested that Bike Parks has done absolutely nothing in pursuance of its walking track management function, I have now to take that back. These two signs from the old walking track car park have been removed

and Bike Parks have replaced them with one of their own.

Nice logo...

I carried on down to the OFFICIAL car park and emerged from the van about the same time as the drizzle started.

I crossed the road and set off beside the rope course fence to the bottom of the old walking track up the hill. As I approached the top, it was all too familiar.

Compare three months ago:

I climbed the side of the track and detoured round the logjam up ahead. The only thing that was different since last time was the lupins.

These were just germinating last time I was here. Now you have to wade through them, and given the drizzle this is not a bad description. They also effectively mask much of the debris from the logging, though the debris are still there nonetheless.

We head on down the quadbike track between Walker Rd and Selwyn Rd, and on up Selwyn Rd to the gate into the nature reserve. It's taken me just under 45 minutes fatman time to get this far. It will presumably take that much time to get back. That leaves me 45 minutes to spare for the reserve walk.

Just across the road from the Reserve gate is a stile.

The untrodden grass all around it says as clearly as anything can that nobody much comes this way any more. The path up to the Old Lookout is also beginning to look overgrown. There's three or four small trees down across the track, and the foliage either side is encroaching in a way it doesn't seem to when there are lots of people walking by.

I've missed the rohutu flowering at the Old Lookout this year. However I did spot a kawakawa with nicely fattening flowers.

I shoot a few more record shots - some ferns I want to identify if I can - and head back down. On the way, I spot a couple of totara seedlings by the side of the track that I'd never seen before. They're quite uncommon this end of the reserve - no parent trees that I've seen.

I have thoroughly enjoyed watching and photographing the regeneration process over the last couple of years. It would be great if it was more widely available. Once you get to it, it's the best piece of bush walking between Mt Auckland and the back end of Muriwai.

I decide to head back down through the old carpark instead of crashing my way back across the debris. This time the 800 m of gravel road down to the OFFICIAL carpark is a little quieter. Only 12 cars pass me and only a couple of them are doing more than twice the speed limit. Alice is getting much better at heading towards the edge of the road and sitting quietly until they pass.

I strip off my drizzled shirt and replace it, and pull out the thermos for a cup of tea and sandwich before I head in to town to collect my niece from the ferry. I watch as an old, black, Japanese-model car wheel-spins past me, and rockets out onto the road scattering a 5m arc of loose metal before fishtailing up the hill. I count my blessings. I might easily have been on the road walking down.