World Nordic Walking Day 2012

New Zealand

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 Aki Karihtala

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!

Cure For Kids - Long Bay Beach

North Shore Nordic Walkers met locally on Sunday, only a few of us actually turned up, I suspect the weather bomb the previous day had put a lot of people off from walking, but as it turned out the morning was spectacular, it was slightly cold but lovely to walk in.

We met at Toroa Street, and parked outside Toroa Physiotherapy, we were joined by a Swedish gentlemen called Nils, I hope that’s correct, who brought along his poles and he told me that there is a path outside his home in Sweden that he walks most days.  He is visiting his son and family in Torbay and enjoying the company of his grandchild.

We walked down Toroa Street turning left at the bottom into Cliff Road and followed the track through the back of MERC and across the bridge to Long Bay beach.

Boat at Long Bay Beach

As we chatted and walked we noticed a boat in the water, it’s not often you see a boat at Long Bay and there appeared to be a couple of buoys in the water and another small orange craft bobbing around not too far from the markers.  It was as got closer we saw a camera crew and huge crowd of people gathered at the far end of Long Bay beach.

Crowd waiting for the Swimming Race

One of our walkers Pam E approached a chap in a wet suit to ask what was going on, and he explained that there was a triathlon event, a swim, run and bike ride through Long Bay.  It was then we spotted the Cure for Kids banners and then at this point swimmers set off down the beach and into the water.

Cure for Kids

We made our way across the beach onto the grass area and in the background near the back of the park were marquees and a finish line complete with bikes stood up and ready to be collected by the participants.  We stopped and chatted to a couple of the girls with laptops, who told us a little more about the event.  We carried on up the road towards the start of the Coastal Track but there were markers already in place for the bikes.  We decided to walk up to Vaughan Homestead so that Nils could take a look at the old traditional Kiwi weatherboard house that is currently run by volunteers and I believe it is to be opened for Devonshire teas shortly; now that would be a nice end to a morning walk!

Marker at the Coastal Track

Coming back we thought that we might pick up the Nature trail but a Marshall appeared and told us that the track was going to be used by the 12k runners so we headed back to the road.  We stopped at the Coastal Track entrance and spoke to another Marshall who was directing the bikes through, I mentioned that we had never seen the event at Long Bay before and apparently this is the first time the triathlon had been held at Long Bay.

Vaughan Homestead

We made our way along the footpath in single file to avoid any collisions with the bike race and came across someone trying to get an oven ready for the finish and the famished participants, the smell was divine.  We were bewildered as to what the oven was for and it apparently was for pizza!

We continued on along the road through the park and onto Beach Road, doing a bit of traffic direction as we passed through for people looking for the event.  We had to cross over to the opposite side of the footpath to avoid the orange traffic cones and the roadwork, climbing the hill to Torbay shops and then crossing over and back to Toroa Street.

It was a quick and short walk on Sunday but we did extend our time slightly by enjoying a coffee at the Baker’s Gallery.