The travel log of Vic and Steve

It was a perfect spring like day today so we headed out on the Red Rocks walkway from Owhiro Bay carpark to the seal colony past Red Rocks.  Lovely coastal walk with stunning views of the snow capped South Island mountains. We walked 5km, sat and ate an apple looking at the view then returned.  There were tonnes of seals today basking in the sunshine. Man they stink en masse like this. Hard to get a good photo but the one above gives you an idea - yes the lumps that look like seals are seals.  As it is a stunning Wellington day there were also hundreds of people, tens of cyclists, a handful of trail bikes and we thinks we gave way to over 200+ 4wd vehicles.  My tiny rant is what a load of dickheads. This path is multi user yet the 4wd's sped, forced bikes and walkers to scramble up and down banks by not just slowing down and giving us room. Honestly of the 200+ only 7 vehicles did the kiwi index finger raise thank you gesture when we got out of ...

Foolishly believing the Metservice forecast we set off for a hike on Saturday. The weather in Wellington was pretty terrible and while the whole country was facing record winds on Sunday the forecast for the Wairarapa was mild Saturday in comparison.  We chose Waiohine Gorge as the swing bridge looks spectacular- and it is! As is the gorge it crosses. A 120m suspension bridge, 40m above the river apparently, it's one person wide with a loading of 7 people. This is somewhere I wish I had brought Don and Imogen when they were young - very wow. There was a family down below us as we crossed. In the selfie pic you can see the bridge above.  Back to our hike. We drove over the hill planning to hike and stay the night in Martinborough - the latter part we did.  As we left the sealed road and hit gravel, realising we had no cell coverage on either phone it also dawned on us we didn't tell anyone else where we had gone.  The rain was pretty bad and was sticking to the Tararu...

With many of our friends tackling multi day walks like The Kepler, Heaphy and Waikarimoana Tracks we are conscious of needing to get more hills into our walking. So this Wellington Anniversary weekend we took a walk around the block - as Steve called it.  From home we walked through the school, up and over Jubilee Road then up to join the Piwakawaka track from the trig / reservoir (more up from the Punjab Street entrance) before walking the historic track to Old Porirua Rd.  The Piwakawaka track is only 1.2km long, Mike tells me it's maintained by volunteers which explains how overgrown and scrubby it is, barely more than a goat track in places with many foliage covered steps.  From there we walked down Old Porirua Road, up the start of Ngaio Gorge and into Trelissick Park following, in part, the Northern Walkway route. I can see why the munchkins call it the dog park, there were many happy dogs in the stream. After all this downhill and flat it was time for climbing ...

It was a beautiful day-after-boxing-day today. Sun shining, 24 degrees and light breeze. We have been talking about the 11km Southern Walkway for a while now, not sure we knew what to expect so here is our review.  Wellington has a fabulous town belt system. There are walking / mountain biking tracks throughout so we are quite lucky to have that kind of access. The Southern Walkway goes from Oriental Parade, around Mt Victoria and follows the ridge line from there all the way to Island Bay.  I would describe it as steep/steep, followed by Wow view, discovery of a new park we didn't know existed, followed by more steep/steep - as a continuous loop. There are wee down bits too but much of this track is up! Not much is flat.  The town belt isn't spectacular. The track starting at the Mt Vic end weaves through a pine forest, so heavy with roots to navigate and feels like it's primarily a mountain biking track. You certainly can see great tree stumps and ledges Hobbits hid und...

When you fly into Wellington from the south (meaning it's a northerly and likely a tad bumpy) you see this fabulous lighthouse standing on a headland out the window.  It was pretty still this morning so we thought - great day for Pencarrow, one of the many walks on our summer list. Well by the time we mucked around with domestic chores, found we had no food so shopped and drove to the end of the road in Eastbourne it was midday before we set off.  The track for the majority is flat and gravel driveway like. It follows the shoreline with a steep steep sheer hill on the other side. The round trip walk is 4.5 hours according to the sign and I would describe 4 hours of it as easy walking, with 30 mins up to the lighthouse and down more steep and definitely watch your feet territory.  The views are spectacular. If the wind hadn't come up it would have been awesome to stop at the top a while but by then it was steady and we could hardly see Khandallah across the harbour for den...