Waitawa Regional Park (The Sun-burn story)

Edmund Carter-Anderson
Jan 19, 2020
4 min read

Our Sunday started with us being picked up by Courtney (Rosa). We had planned to get to the Clevedon markets as they opened (before it gets to hot), then head from the markets to our walk. As usual things did not go quite as planned. On the motorway the dogs decided that all three wanted to sit on my lap in the front seat. They seem to only do this when we are in Courtney's car because usually the boys sleep in the back. Anyway we safely chucked them back in the backseat and used the open crate door to keep them there.

We made it to Clevedon markets a little to early and spent about an hour walking around waiting for our coffee to cool down. As 9am approached we were finally able to pick up some doggie treats from this little old man. He makes some "doggie crack" as he calls it and well the pups were highly enthusiastic about his treats. His store is called Miss Maggies and he had a tiny elderly poodle "guarding" his stock/ sleeping on the table. The treats are pretty reasonably priced and after hearing what amazing liver fudge he makes I had to pick up some.

We came home with 6 large cookies, liver fudge and some bunny bits. (he does cash and EFTPOS)

From here we drove for about 15min to the regional park. Both the markets and the park are on-leash, with the park having some off leash areas. As we drove into the park at around 9:20am I was getting a bit worried about the weather. There was zero clouds and wind. This meant that the open walk was about to get super hot. Being the dummy that I am left my sunblock sitting on the table at home next to where the walking gear was.....

We started in the mountain bike car-park as the earlier car-park was closed. From here we did the red track also known as the Pūweto Loop . This track is meant to be 10km and about 2.5 hours. However you are not meant to go into paddocks where you can see stock (it says on signs). This means that the part of the path to the right (above Clevedon-Kawakawa rd) was out of bounds and instead we walked down the white road to Waitawa Bay. We also decided that the beach was far to busy so we avoided the steep downhill part of the walk to Mātaitai Bay.

The sun graced us with its full presence and we were melting by the time we figured out how to get off the mountain bike track and onto the red path. Along this ridge line there were some nice large trees providing us with some shade. The boys relaxed under the trees and had some bottled water while Rosa did some posing for Courtney.

We came across a fair few walkers, 2 mountain bikers (who kept zig zagging paths with us) and 2 horses. This meant it was the perfect time to test out our new 5m Paws and Claws long lines. We dragged them through multiple piles of animal poop, green troughs, dirt/dust and prickles/what ever other plants were in the paddocks, This also means 1. Hopefully I do not stand on Ed and 2. The boys get a bit more freedom. The red trail zig zagged and back tracked a bit along itself down what I thought on the map was a river but it is actually an old swamp bed with plants. Luckily the pups were cool from swimming in a trough. We weren't so lucky and started regretting the walk at this point only 2km in ha. Along past the disc golf course we ended up climbing up a hill and were greeted by some cows at the other end. The rules here are a bit weird so we just avoided the cows and continued along our path to another trough.

We finally made it to the main road of the park and we were met with sheep. They were standing in the middle of the entry way to the next part of our walk. Shit. So we walked down the grass along the road instead. The road was getting busier and busier as the day went on and we needed to get off and into the next part of the walk quickly. Luckily for us the next part of the walk involved a pebble beach where the water was a clear teal blue and warm. We went in. It was a glorious way to cool off until little Ed started to get to cold. I have no idea how it was 27 degrees Celsius and a beautifully calm day but he did. The little shed had some water that they do not recommend drinking (should boil first) as it is rain water but we were thirsty and the dogs bottles were empty so... We filled up one thirsty dog bottle for the dogs and rinsed the other one out a few times and had some bottles for ourselves. The water was a pain instead of just turning the tap you had to actually pump the water with the handle but it is a good way to save water I guess since we are in summer of course.

From the beach we continued up the hill along the rest of the red path. This side has beautiful views of the harbor and some light breezes. We climbed a few stairs and trucked on along the thin forest path back to the car park. Two sun burnt and wet humans and three tired and sleepy dogs it was a nice 1 hour 45 min walk.