Te Ara Tahuna Estuary



Estuary Cycleway and Walkway

Sunday was a wet day and I debated as to whether or not the walk should be cancelled.  I had arranged to meet some of the North Shore Nordic Walkers locally and others at the i-site at Orewa. Very often the weather can be atrocious in Auckland overnight then in the morning it can clear, at 6.30 am it was still bouncing down and rather cold.  I decided to carry on and the weather was fine, although still damp and colder than recent but the rain held as we walked around the estuary.

We started the estuary walk from the i-site car park and worked our way inland along the path, it’s a great walkway shared with cyclists and dog walkers.  The path is skirted by houses, some of which are big with spectacular gardens and views overlooking the water.  The concrete path is divided into a cyclist section and a walkway for pedestrians and cheerily shared by all.  We often stop and talk to people on our walk around as  the path is easily negotiated and reasonably flat, it’s also used for many walking and running events.  After a circuit of the estuary the path leads under the road bridge to the sea side where you can carry on past the camping grounds and walk down to the Surf Club and beach.  Today we walked along the estuary only and we had a new walker join us who already knew one of our regular walkers and she slotted in quite easily.

Garden at Orewa Estuary

We poled our way around the far side of the estuary past one of our favourite houses where the owner obviously takes great pride in their garden, it’s extremely ornate with lots of ornaments and little features dotted around the open garden.  We walked across the bridge, the native flax and lillies are starting to fade now but still dominate the water's edge.  We walked past the new housing complex, continuing along the path past Silverdale PrimarySchool and onto the bridge just outside Kingsway College. A little further along this path we bumped into June and Paul Stevenson taking the ‘Nordic Edge” class along the estuary.  It’s a great location for training, parking is easy and simple to measure your time and distance; if you get a chance to take one of the training classes I do recommend them.

Cycleway and Walkway

We continued along on the Southern side of the estuary past the new houses to the bridge and up onto the road bridge where we watched the tide coming in for a while as it came in really quickly.

The third bridge here was built in 1999, on the site of the first original wooden bridge that was built around 1881.  The second bridge was cleverly designed some fifty years later, there were no roads as such and water transport was used extensively which was a problem at Orewa river mouth.  The engineers however designed a turntable which allowed boats with masts to pass through.  Then as time progressed and road transport increased, the bridge became unsafe, a sharp turn caused many accidents off the road onto the bridge, so the larger bridge that is here today was developed that removed some of the dangerous curve out of the road. We walked back to the i-site car park, altogether this walk takes about an hour and a half and is roughly around 7.5 km; an excellent way to blow the cobwebs away on a Sunday morning!

Lillies along the Estuary

As I packed away my poles I noticed a lady unpacking her poles, they weren’t Nordic poles so I asked her if she had been walking long. In fact she hadn’t as she suffered a broken ankle in December and was still struggling but had read about Nordic Walking and decided to have a go to see if it helped with her recovery. Not one to miss an opportunity I instant whipped out a card and invited her to walk with us sometime and to take a class.  It’s amazing how many people actually buy tramping poles, I hope she was OK they looked way too tall and heavy for her!

Bank of the Estuary

We decided to try the cafe in the Estuary Art Centre, it was a bit slow as they were only able to make one coffee at a time and that meant we all drank at different times, but I did have the smoked salmon bagel which was rather tasty and I didn’t have to wait long at all.  We didn't have the chance to take a look around the exhibition, I was told that the centre was originally a Kentucky Fried Chicken emporium.  It certainly was a great venue for an art gallery, set on two floors with the upper floor immediately accessible by the entrance and the cafe occupying the space by the entrance.

We will have to have an explore of the gallery sometime!