This is the third year of the World Nordic Walking Day event, and New Zealand was the first country to commence the celebrations at the Sir Peter Blake Marine Educational and Recreational Centre at Long Bay, Auckland on the North Shore and hosted by Paul and June Stevenson our INWA representatives. The centre is ideally located with fabulous views of Long Bay beach and cliffs, and a great venue for our event.
The Sir Peter Blake Marine Education &Recreation Centre
Despite the cold and wet weather the previous day we had a great turn out and the weather improved as we met at 8.30 am and separated into our groups for the two walks starting at the beach. There was a 45 minutes walk through the park and back and a 90 minute walk organised to go up the cliff past Granny’s Bay.
Taking Poles to Long Bay Beach
Long Bay beach is a kilometre long and to start the celebrations of our unique exercise of Nordic Walking we warmed up with some exercise on the beach then walked to the North end to walk across the park, along the grass and towards the Vaughan Homestead.
Warm up on the Beach
The homestead is over 100 years old, made of New Zealand Kauri and Puriri native wood. It stands overlooking the beach at Long Bay with magnificent views of the park. We lingered a while to look at the view before taking the nature trial through the bush and separating into our groups.
Vaughan House Greensleeves - Caught you Sheila
Our group led by Paul and myself walked through the cattle gates across the trail and onto the cliff top. The views are simply magnificent, it’s quite slippery along the rest of the cliff track here and we picked our way carefully through the mud and wet grass to a great viewpoint - someone was surprised that they could see the lighthouse at Tiritiri Matangi Island.
We returned to the track via the Nature Trail and through the park, taking a toilet break along the way and then back down the beach to MERC at the South end.
Top of the Cliff before Pohutukawa Bay
At the centre we had a quiz, speeches and acknowledgements for Nordic Walkers that had achieved their personal goals by entering events.
Paul Stevenson gives the Message from INWA President AkiKarihtala
All of the speakers were Nordic Walkers and most had very personal and interesting experiences to share with us. It was a great fun morning and we are lucky to have some strong Nordic Walking groups across Auckland; we did have Nordic Walkers visit us from Rotorua too. It was a great opportunity to catch up with some of the other groups and Walking Group Leaders and exchange walking ideas and walk plans.
Bronze bust of Sir Peter Blake
The morning went so quickly I felt like I didn’t get the chance to speak to everyone that I would have liked to, but it did give me the opportunity to meet some of our new Nordic Walkers. June mentioned one of our instructors Sandrine Smith is leading a team for the Arthritis NZ marathon and I will also be taking part and are looking for more participants. If you want to know more about the event or sponsor our team, The Nifty Nordic Walkers here’s our details: http://ow.ly/b5man. Thanks!
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