Camping at Wenderholm

Martin and I are just back from four nights camping at the Schischka campground at Wenderholm Regional Park.  It's one of six Auckland Council campgrounds we know of that are accessible by public transport and/or foot and bike; to get to this one we bus to town, bus to Silverdale and bus to Waiwera, then it's a 30-40 min walk (mostly through bush) to the campsite.  It's about 3 hours door to door, and for a lot of that we were on the top deck of a double decker bus :-)

Neither of us took many photos - we were mostly just enjoying a very peaceful quiet week to mark the start of our six month Sabbatical - but below are a few pictures from the trip.

There was hardly anyone in the campsite so we were able to take up heaps of space.  We've recently bought a second pair of adjustable poles for the tarp.  The Schischka campsite doesn't have any picnic tables or substantial trees, so the extra poles were very helpful in enabling us to make a nice cool resting space for the hot afternoons.

You may have noticed we have a new tent!  After Ōmana, the old tent we've had since long before I was well enough to use it was looking pretty sad.  Rather than trying to mend it yet again, we've replaced it.  The new-to-us tent is a Walmart own-brand and not fantastic quality, but looks like it should serve us OK.  It's also HUGE by our standards.

It's probably as wide as the other one was at the head end, but it's the same width all the way down.

And, where the other one was slightly shorter than our sleeping mats, this one is more-or-less a foot longer than them.  Yay!

The tent also opens at the sides (rather than the head and foot, like our old one), which means we get a door each (great for getting up to the loo in the night), and both of those come with a spacious vestibule :-)

 

The campsite's right on the Pūhoi River, which is very much a tidal estuary at this point.  Here it is at low-ish tide.

On the first and third days we went for a swim at Wenderholm Beach - a 30-ish min walk away.  It's a stunning beach!  On the Monday it was quite rough and we had fun playing in the waves (and having a go at catching some - something I'm still very much learning to do!).  On Wednesday (and when Martin went on his own on Thursday) it was pretty still.  The photos below are from then.

I still don't do well if I exercise on subsequent days.  After doing a half hour swim and 13,000 steps on Monday, Tuesday was a quiet day.  But on Wednesday we decided to walk to the beach (above) and then over the cliff you see at the right of the beach and down to Waiwera for ice creams and pizza.

Looking down at the beach at the end of the first upward stretch

Looking towards Whangaparāoa from just after the highest point

After the highest point there was a sign warning the track was changing from a 'walking track' to a 'tramping track'.  Gone were the stairs and boardwalks, and instead we were navigating tree roots and earth as we went down the steep bits.  It was fun and I was pleased with how well I did - my balance is clearly vastly improved compared to the last time I did something similar :-) 

Back on the flat, walking through nikau forest along the edge of the Waiwera River

We then crossed the Waiwera bridge and headed to Waiwera itself for ice creams, a rest and some lunch.  The place we'd hoped to get pizzas at wasn't doing pizza that day (it's an all-purpose cafe/pub/restaurant/bar - it and the minimart appear to be the only shops in Waiwera these days, unless you count the physio!) and we initially thought we'd eat our own food instead.  But then it started raining and being indoors felt very appealing - and the burger and chips we got instead were yummy.

 

After lunch we headed back over the Waiwera bridge and onto the path we'd taken when we arrived on Monday, meaning we did the whole Wenderholm perimeter walk (and then some!) that day.  With that, and some incidental walking around the campsite, I did just over 20,000 steps that day - by far the most I've done since I got a step counter back in 2018.  My previous record was 15,504 steps, when I went up Rangitoto with Keith's family back in 2022.

 

But mostly we were just enjoying the peacefulness.

The Pūhoi River at close to full tide, just before I went for a swim on Thursday.

I had two lovely swims in the river around high tide - plus we went wading one evening at fairly low tide and saw quite a big school of quite large fish :-)  The water is definitely a bit salty this close to the sea, but it doesn't leave your skin sticky like salt water does, and the way it supported my body when I was swimming felt quite different from how seawater does. 

Breakfast by the river on Friday morning.

Our breakfast view.  A bit before this the whole width of the river was full of tendrils of fog - you can see traces of it still well across the river where the channel is deepest.

The one thing we needed to watch out for whilst camping was the birds!  Here you can see our breakfast (oats that we leave to soak overnight) in a careful stack with a pot of water as a weight on the top to stop the ducks and pukeko getting in.  And some ducks decided that water was a great thing to drink from... We also had a both almonds and sultanas temporarily stolen by birds when we weren't being careful, but we managed to get the bags off them before they got too far with them!
It was such a restful holiday - it was a bit of a shock to the system to arrive at Hibiscus Coast bus station and suddenly be in amongst people and noise again!  And very low carbon at only 26kg CO2e across the two of us - with only 5kg on transport!!!  We've also bought Auckland Council camping passes (giving us unlimited camping till the end of September, albeit via a pretty clunky booking system), so the trip cost just under $60 (half on transport, half on gas and food); it would have been $200 if we'd paid for the campsite as well.