Windy Tops

Tag: coastal

  • Daywalk: Honeycomb Rock, Wairarapa

    I intuitively associate strong wind with exposed places at high altitude, but it doesn’t always work that way. Apparently Glenburn Station, up the south-east coast of the North Island from Honeycomb Rock, is one of those places that can be very exposed. I shouldn’t have been too surprised given that Castlepoint isn’t much further up the coast. This was my bail-out at my own pace walk on flat ground, as a compromise to keep me sane when my dodgy knee caused me to cancel a scurried weekend attempt at Neill Winchcombe in the Tararuas with Craig. Hopefully at a later time, though.

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    It’s a windy coastline.

    It turns out I was the only person walking the walk to Honeycomb Rock last Sunday. A family group of about four began a few minutes before me, but turned around within the first ten minutes. I don’t blame them but, having driven for a couple of hours to get there, I wasn’t about to do the same. I’d heard that Honeycomb Rock would be an interesting place to visit, but didn’t really know what to expect. Information about the walk is fairly scarce. This was combined with my general lack of research before I left. Being ill informed as I was, I ran into a few issues. The first was that aside form the starting point (Glenburn Station), I didn’t really know where to start. The second was that aside from somewhere around the coast, I didn’t really know where to go. The third was that aside from something about fancy rocks and a seal colony, I didn’t really know what to expect. I didn’t help that I’d for some reason been thinking it was “Honeycomb Rocks” instead of “Honeycomb Rock”, but I guess now I know better.

    Date: 13th December, 2009
    Location: Glenburn Station, Wairarapa Coast.
    Route: Walk to Honeycomb Rock and back, wherever that is.
    [Photos]
    [map:https://93a12629bf06.ngrok-free.app/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/20091213-honeycomb-walk-wairarapa.gpx%5D

    This post is a trip report. You can find other trip reports about other places linked from the Trip Reports Page, or by browsing the Trip Reports Category.

    The walk is administered by the New Zealand Department of Conservation in the Wairarapa region, but is entirely on the privately owned Glenburn Station (sheep and cattle farming). It’s officially closed when Glenburn Station is in baby-raising mode (ie. lambing season), but even the DOC signs only say that this is “usually” about September and October (despite the website info being specific about this), so if it’s near this time and you have any doubt you should probably contact an office in the Wairarapa to find out before going all the way out there. It’s not a major enough walk for much information to be available through DOC’s passive resources beyond a sparsely clad pamphlet downloadable from the website, and as a coastal walk it’s probably targeted mostly at people who live in relatively nearby places such as Carterton or Masterton. It’s not often that I go out for a daywalk and spend two thirds of the time driving, but I wanted to see what it was.
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  • Daywalk: Makara Beach Loop

    With a need to find a reasonably easy place to walk in my new shoes, I thought I might go for a wander around the Makara Beach loop. The last time I tried to do this I discovered I was a week too late, and the farm-land section of the loop had been closed for lambing (which happens between 1st August and 31st October). So thanks to transport difficulties I’ve had in the past, this was the first time I’d actually walked the ridge part of the loop.

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    The Makara turbines of Project West Wind.

    It’s hard to talk about the Makara Beach Loop these days without talking about Project West Wind — the initiative of Meridian Energy to build a giant wind farm on Wellington’s south coast. It took years to get through the consent process, and my most vivid memory of this was one of the few meetings I attended of the Tararua Tramping Club back in 2007. The meeting involved a representative of Meridian who described the wind farm proposal with a slide-show decorated by a large photo of a cute and happy dog basking in the wind, many noisy people whom I was later informed were not regular attendees of TTC meetings, and a lot of angry heckling.

    Date: 14th June, 2009
    Location: Makara Loop Walk, from Makara Beach.
    Route: Just doing the loop clockwise starting from the beach.
    [Photos and Videos]

    This post is a trip report. You can find other trip reports about other places linked from the Trip Reports Page, or by browsing the Trip Reports Category.

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