The long and grinding road...

Ahipara to The Narrows

59.8 km

After a brief, gentle weep the weather gods smiled on us today. In a bid to beat the threatened Westerly storm, we woke well before dawn and hit the Holiday Park driveway at 7:15. We reached the gate a little before 7:30 after stopping to chat to a fellow TA-er just about to head up to the Cape before riding back to Ahipara tonight. Hopefully the forecast NW winds came good for Graham & Lloyd.. We'll see them again on the boat from Pouto Point, if not before.

The run out of Ahipara was uneventful, apart from meeting a woman in hi-vis at the second junction, who was busy looking for a digger that had gone missing overnight! Oddly enough, less than 1km down the road we came across two guys loading a digger onto a trailer. They assured us it was absolutely, certainly their digger. They were bigger than us so we believed them.

The bucolic scenery gradually closed in as we ground our way steadily toward Herekino and then Broadwood, climbing consistently up long, energy sapping grades, interspersed with exhilarating downhill sweeps. The reward for this effort was sweeping vistas of regenerating bush pocked with pockets of farmed pasture. In Broadwood we picked up some food for tonight's dinner, and breakfast and lunch. And as it was morning smoko time, we had a pie each... Les needs to put more pepper in his peppered steak pies, but the steak & kumara could not be faulted. Took me straight back 40+ years to a meat & tattie pie from Gregg's in Leyland.

By this time we'd dried off completely from the half-hour or so of showers we'd had, the sun was out and it was warming up rapidly. Just in time for the loooong haul up the rough gravel of Paponga Road. How could it possibly keep climbing so consistently for so long? Each time we thought we'd hit the summit and started to descend, round the next bend was another bloody uphill. We began to regret refusing the early offer from two young farm boys in a side-by-side: 'Would you like to hang onto the side and we'll pull you up?' The shopkeeper in Broadwood had warned us the locals drove like hoons on this narrow, winding road, but the few vehicles we saw were driven with impeccable courtesy.

But, as ever, the reward for the hard work and whirring motors (mine whines like Nigel Mansell!) was a stunning view wherever you looked. We did eventually reach the top... On the descent we encountered a local resident clearing a freshly windblown tree from the middle of a blind bend. A short chat, many thanks, and half a kilometre later we diverged from the 'official' route as we continued down Paponga Road en route to our overnight accommodation at the idyllic-sounding The Tree House. A brief route discussion at the intersection with West Coast Highway was resolved by Marg flagging down a ute and forcing the driver to admit that, yes, this was the WCH. She had completely missed the earlier junction with Rakautapu Road, the purist TA route (further and over another hill). Ironically, having discussed long and hard in the planning, and it being decided to take the shortcut to the Tree House, this afternoon Marg remarked that it would have been nice to come through Kohukohu. Just saying...

Of course, the early departure proved unnecessary, as the howling gale and torrential rain never materialised. Instead we had a restful afternoon strolling round the nature trail Pauline & Phil have routed through their regenerating bush, including a lookout over the Hokianga. In 43 years they've established something very special on the former cattle farm: the towering totara didn't exist when they moved here. The outlook from our cabin is to die for.

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