North Shore Nordic Walkers met at Rosedale Park on Sunday and it was jolly cold. We didn’t see one sheep, but there were apparently young hockey players out in force braving the cold morning, I didn’t envy those parents having to stand around and watch!
It’s a lovely little park at Rosedale; it’s tucked away along a seemingly long driveway on Jack Hinton Drive. I was reliably informed that it’s always much colder in this area and holds the mist longer on chilly mornings. The park is located in the Albany Basin, originally Albany was a small village surrounded by farms and fields and was named after the local creek, Lucas Creek. The village was renamed to Albany after Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany; he was Queen Victoria’s eighth child. The Maori name for this location is Okahukura, which means place of rainbows, or place of butterflies.I have written about this park before it’s a well used venue and lots of activities are often held there, and we have used it on a couple of occasions now to walk in. The water treatment reservoir is on the left opposite the sports field and is usually a home to grazing sheep.
We followed the path along through the park which eventually leads to a wooden boardwalk where you can cross the road and into the Industrial area. We crossed over onto the concrete path which leads to Unsworth, then walked through a small tunnel under the highway. It’s been beautifully decorated and opens into a residential area, we carried on across the road and through to Unsworth Reserve.
We were expecting it to be very boggy underfoot but we were surprised to see most of the bush walk was dry and easily accessible.
As we carefully picked our way through the bush we came across sections that were obviously still being cleared, the size of the felled tree trunks were amazing and we had to navigate our way around them.
Once out into the reserve the paths were relatively clear, the park area has been fitted with outdoor equipment and we stopped on our way back to take a snap of one of our Nordic Walkers posing on one of the machines. A bit hard to extract youself from the machines whilst still clutching Nordic Walking poles - eh Pam?
The Pukeko’s were out in great numbers, these are fabulous bright blue coloured birds with striking red beaks and long ungainly orange legs and feet. The Pukeko is a New Zealand swamp hen, a flightless bird; it’s quite skittish and does look quite comical. The Pukeko image is used all over New Zealand for all manner of products, it’s easily identifiable and lovely to watch, and they can be quite noisy too. I have been told that they can also be ruthless birds, apart from eating insects and frogs they will eat other bird eggs and will kill ducklings, eating only the head apparently!We stayed for a few minutes watching the birds then carried on across the park and back again to Rosedale Park. We met at the Euro Deli on Don Mckinnon Drive for coffee and I can recommend the berry smoothies! I also noticed that they stock mulled wine sachets; I’ll definitely be visiting again soon!
Further Information & Sources:
The Euro Deli: http://bit.ly/q9xgfb
1 comment:
Love the Pukeko picture! Jayne R - UK
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