Woodhill Diary

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Tuesday 26 June 2007

page 1

Well, I left the last journal entry 5 months ago or a bit more with a fairly negative take, and my conscience has been increasingly troubling me: what if they've got their collective A into G and there's a whole new walking scene I'm missing out on, and right under my nose?

Then I got a phone call from a walking friend asking me what the track was like these days, and I had to confess I didn't know, so I set out today on a blue dome morning to find out.

I needn't have worried. This pic really says it all.

Remember, this is nearly 10 months after I was assured by the CHH recreation officer that the walking tracks would be open in a few weeks, and that in the meantime it was fine for me to make my way through the recently harvested areas.

Carter Holt Harvey rules....

The old walkers' carpark is still fenced off. Somebody appears to have ripped down the Towaway sign, but the fence still closes it off. From this spot, you can access the Conservation Reserve track in about 5 minutes and 400 metres.

In a year or two of regular walking here, my vehicle was never once interfered with, and I never saw the slightest sign of the broken glass that mingles with the gravel on many a Waitakere Ranges parking site. Yet security concerns were cited as a principal reason for localising all parking at the Bikeparks complex, and my understanding is that the stewardship of the walking areas had passed to Bikeparks under the new arrangements.

I head on down the hill and park. Bikeparks haven't been idle. There are some new signs:

some commercial development

and a shiny brand new waste bin

Even on a winter weekday morning there are enough cars travelling fast enough on the narrow gravel road for me to be reluctant to walk the 800m or so back up the hill, and I head across the road to see what's new.

Well, that's not new. It's nearly a year since harvesting ceased.

However, this looks promising, though I'm not sure it wasn't here last time.... I head on down the road, anyway, in the direction indicated.

Uh huh... On the other side of the wire are a couple of bikers hooning around in the rope course area, while a busload of youth are lined up for briefing in the carpark.

Nothing for walkers here...

or here...

Hang on, what are those signs up the back on the left. Maybe there's a walking track there....

Nope.

I take a brief moment to think what a fathmandu sponsorship logo might look like. Maybe that's how tracks get built... Possibly better luck with kathmandu. Presumably if these guys have assumed responsibility for walking track maintenance they aren't just sitting on their a's waiting for sponsors to arrive who will pay them to act on their responsibilities.

Hang on, what's that on the gate?

Maybe CHH are still the people to contact. I must check it out. Maybe you could too, if you're a keen walker. The more people they hear from, the more interest they may take.

I continue looking for signs of walking track access, and return up the hill to the original Track Closed sign

The options are to crash through cutty grass and scrub under the pines beside the rope course, or, to brave the forest of keep out signs, and make my way up through the rope course. Nobody is about at the moment except the couple of bikers, so off we go, through the gate,

past the first sign, and the next

The rope course is quite impressive, and there are enough people whizzing past, or suspended overhead when it is busy to make the ground beneath no place for the inattentive.

WE head quickly up the track, moving to the side as a flying fox wire appears above us. It's only about a hundred metres, and we are out the other side on the old walking track.

It's not seen much wear recently, for sure. We head up to the top, and a familiar sight is there to greet us

I drop back a metre or two and scramble up the side of the small gully to the left, and from here make my way up the last few metres to open ground. Last time I was here, the ground was covered ankle deep in fresh green new lupin seedlings. Now its a waste of dead lupin and half dead pampas grass.

Over to the left I spot something I hadn't noticed last time, a possible track.

I make my way through the litter, and find the remains of the old walking track heading off through the edge of the trees.