Mangemangeroa Valley

A few weeks ago (sorry I broke my glasses and then life 🤦‍♀️).

A few weeks ago Courtney and I were planning a walk that she had found. The Auckland council website said that the wall was 8km (two walks joined). Okay we thought that means it is around 16km total plus we also want to walk to the beach if possible so that is almost 20km (probably 18ish).

Can we make it? As most of you know I can't drive. So our options were to walk part of it (tbh this was not an option), walk the whole thing, walk there one way and then short cut back. We decided we should do the whole walk and if we got desperate due to heat etc Courtney would Uber to the car and then drive to get me and the dogs.

Perfect so let's start our walk ; turns out the council website has signs which mean loop or there and back. So instead of 18km we walked 10ish. The walk starts at the end of a steep cu de salc (Haley Lane). Which is confusing because the car park that is on the street says no parking between 7am and 7pm. We think this is a mistake but was not going to get towed (at this point we still assumed we were walking 18km).

So we drove half way down and parked on the grass along the curb - hoping that the brakes on the car worked and the car would be there when we came back haha. We then descended down a very steep road past some curious alpacas, surprisingly the dogs didn't care about the alpacas and just wanted to get to the walk. As did we - down the steep road to some steep stairs we managed to find the start of the Bush path.

About 10 minutes in the path splits, we went left (the correct way), we have no idea where the one in the right went which is another reason to go back right? The path is easy - gravel laid and paved the whole way with a few flights of stairs, this then opens up to a boardwalk style path over the estuary and then flicks between all of the above. We also walked along the estuary in the water for a decent part, A. to make the boys more tired and B. to cool off. At low tide you can walk from the point (Shelly Beach) across to Cockle Bay, the tide was too high for us so we went along the back roads. It was about here where we realized that it is only a total of 8km and not 8km each way.

Shelly beach was very cute, perfect lighting for photos, clear blue water and no one around apart from a few fishermen on the other side. Grab the camera out of the bag and it is dead. Oops, turns out Courtney may have left her camera on all night and all walk, after charging it the night before. So I grab my camera out of my bag and snap a few shots, and here a weird sound. Courtney has sunk in the mud in one of the bodies of water, Rosa being the cutie she is, was still holding her insta model position. After a nice paddle followed by some photos we headed to Cockle bay.

Along the back streets we re applied sunblock and then turned down a small side reserve - it was bliss, except for neighboring children screaming. All until … boom…. Thick rain drops suddenly come out of nowhere and drench us. Luckily the rain passed and the sun came out again - this was the perfect way to stay cool. Cockle bay was a bit busier then I would have liked and off-leash hours were ending so we headed back the way we came along the path.

Under the bridge the pups started howling in the echo, schnauzers (especially mine) can be loud.

When we were almost at the car a person came down the pathway with their child on their shoulders and Rosa Froze. I almost tripped over her, she was petrified and just stiff. Once the person had left she was good as new, and we were able to continue our upward hike back to the car.

Note :

The walk itself is easy with a few stairs, however it is very crowded. We must have passed a decent number of people which lead to the walk taking longer than it should with us moving off the path. As the day progressed the number of people doubled and I started to get hot and hangry at the people coming along who would not move over.

Summary :

Distance : 11.7 km

Walk time : 2 Hours and 40 min

Total Time : 4 Hours and 11 min (I’m not sure how we had 2 hours of bumming around)

75 Flights of stairs

On-leash (Off leash during off leash hours on Cockle Bay Beach)

Horrible Parking

Lots of water to cool off in

High and low tide options

Very busy

Easy walk

Road, bush, boardwalk and beach track