Such a beautiful day today spent leisurely canoeing from Puhoi to Wenderholm Regional Park. One of those spontaneous days… the ever reliable forecast says rain… open blinds.... au contraire mon ami - if anyone knows a good weather app please pass it on! So I call up Puhoi River Canoe Hire and place our booking for the afternoon. You have to pre-book as the trips leave depending on the tide. So after a morning of poodling around Takapuna (us toys, book and Danish pastry shop), Dan - hair chop, we got ourselves together and drove to Puhoi for lunch, about a 40 minute drive North from Takapuna.
Puhoi is a small tidy little village with a beautiful river running through it. We popped into Puhoi Hotel for a spot of lunch and an alcoholic rehydration drink – us not the boys. Now lunch to be honest (bar Dan’s BLT) was a little bit along the greasy spoon lines, but the pub itself was fab… really English and such a warm welcoming atmosphere.
As lovely as Takapuna is and well kitted out for fantastic restaurants, the only one thing they are lacking is the ‘relaxed old English country pub’, something with character... given the population of Brits out here I’m sure it would be massive hit… all you Takapuna town planners – hope you read this!
At the hotel pub in Puhoi there wasn’t a square inch of wall space to be seen inside as it was plastered with various artifacts… posters, tickets, photos, notices & various signs. Outside the pub was a lawn stretching down to the river filled with people (including a Harley Davidson and stag party gathering) enjoying the river views and soaking up the sun. To be honest I could quite have easily stayed there all afternoon, but needs must and we pushed on to the Puhoi River Canoe Hire house. After a brief instruction on how to paddle and debrief of the river’s map we were off.
My junior co-pilot, started off very enthusiastically and in no time I was feeling like a drowned rat in the back, but it was so much fun and truly beautiful floating along down the river. The older of the two thought he had died and gone to heaven with all the different birds he spotted enroute.
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| White Faced Heron |
Two hours on we rocked up at Wenderholm Regional Park. The tide was out at this point and the muddy banks were littered with thousands of crab holes. So out go the apples in the lunch box and in go the crabs… the boys embark on a mission to re-home the crabs and dig up the beach.
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| Wenderholm Regional Park |
Wenderholm Regional Park is a stunning grassy spot enclosed on one side by a beautiful river, and the other by a magnificent sheltered stretch of sandy beach. Now I’m no camper, but this would be my idea of camping heaven and I’m quite gutted we don’t have our camping bumph with us. There are a few coin operated BBQ’s and secluded picnic benches dotted around so I think a sausage sizzle is in order and we may have to pay Wenderholm another little visit.
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