Pencarrow Lighthouse

Last Monday, 8 July, was another fine calm day with a forecast of deteriorating weather in the next few days, so I skipped my Zumba class, and we went for a ride instead.

Having “documented” the storm damage and its clean-up on the Wellington south coast last Thursday, we thought we would see how the Eastbourne and Pencarrow coast had fared. It turned out to be a much longer excursion than we had originally planned, nearly three and a half hours, but not all of it was cycling. And it wasn't all about storm damage either.

On our way to Eastbourne we drove through Seaview, on the eastern side of the Hutt River mouth. The storm ravaged this area too. Photo number 2 on this news website  shows how much debris was thrown up onto the roadside path and gardens. It had all been cleared away, but the damage done to the foot/cycle path we have ridden on a few times, is considerable. 

The foot/cycle path along Port Road in Seaview

At Eastbourne, we unloaded the bikes near the wharf, and rode along the road and Marine Parade. Already, right at the beginning of the Marine Parade, there was evidence of huge amounts of beach sand having been tossed up onto the road and onto the gardens along here. The centre of the path had been swept clear, but sand was heaped all along the edges. The council had swept much of it into large piles in several places too.

The storm-dumped sand was piled up after the clean-up

The footpath between the end of Marine Parade and the bus terminus was quite ripped up, but I was pleased to see that the Wahine Memorial seemed to be unscathed.

Damaged footpath near the Eastbourne bus terminus (photo by John)

We had to lift our bikes over the gate to the Pencarrow track, because the narrow gap for people and bikes to go through, had suffered – the metal framework had been distorted, so that there was no longer enough room to manoeuvre a bike through the gap.

In every bay that was exposed to the south, the road had been covered in sand, fine gravel and presumably driftwood and other debris. It was obvious that a grader had been through, pushing sand and debris to the edges. The sand was very coarse – quite different from the fine, fly-away stuff that littered Lyall Bay (refer previous post).

Sand and debris had been pushed to the edges of the road by a grader

The sand and gravel made the surface very skiddy, much harder to negotiate. You had to be careful not to get into drifts of it, or you’d lose your grip and go for a serious wobble. John’s advice: “Go slowly, use a low gear. Actually, it’s good for your balance”. The most treacherous bits were the potholes that had been filled with sand, as they were not obvious until you hit them.

The extra sand made the road tricky to ride in some places. This photo was taken on our way back, in the late afternoon, hence the pinky-gold light and strong shadows (photo by John)

The beach that I had described as “wide, smooth and empty” in my post about Eastbourne last month, was now strewn with driftwood and seaweed, and the whole contour of the beach had changed, having been scoured out right at the back, near the road. Not surprising, considering that record wave heights of 15 m, peak to trough, had been were recorded by a buoy offshore from Baring Head (further round from Pencarrow) in Cook Strait. Most of these waves would have crashed right into these bays.

Debris on the beach

Beach sand had been re-arranged by the storm (photo by John)

I wondered where all the huge trunks of driftwood might have come from, because they were not freshly demolished trees. They looked like they had spent a long time being tossed around by the tides. John thinks they may have originally come down the Orongorongo River, having perhaps been washed down in floods long ago. They may well have landed on other beaches, before drifting away again in the next storm. Some showed signs of having had bits sawn off them, for firewood presumably.

Huge chunks of driftwood were everywhere (photo by John)

Looking up at the hill side of the track I marvelled at the way the vegetation had grown into rounded shapes, in response to the prevailing wind. I think this is the NZ native matagouri. If I am wrong, somebody please put me right.  

The vegetation grows in rounded clumps sculptured by the winds

It seemed we arrived at the Pencarrow Lighthouse more quickly than last time. We decided to go beyond it this time and have a look at the Parangarahu Lakes.

The lower Pencarrow Lighthouse, looking South (photo by John)

Both the lower and upper lighthouses, looking North (photo by John)

Round the corner from the lighthouse were a couple of caves. On my photo, they look like the eyes of some huge, half-buried, lurking monster. The caves are actually not very high - not high enough for someone to stand up in. Not that I tried to take a closer look ...

The caves - they look like the eyes of a half-buried monster ...

We had visited this area at the height of the drought last summer and there wasn't much in the way of lakes to be seen from the road. This time, the huge shingle beach in front of the lakes had been so rearranged by the storm, that we could hardly see where the road was that leads around it. No matter, we took the track that led up the hill towards Lake Kohangapiripiri. We lifted the bikes over the gate, climbed over the style, rode a little way up the track and round the corner, and we were in for a fabulous surprise.

Lake Kohangapiripiri was like a mirror, reflecting the hills

There was the lake, with a surface like a mirror, with perfect reflections of the hills. Reeds grew along some of the edges, and in islands and fingers into the lake, its tips glistening in the sunshine. Stunning! And it was so still and quiet – not a sound, apart from the occasional warbling bird.

Perfect reflections on Lake Kohangapiripiri (photo by John)

Reeds growing along the shores of the lake (photo by John)

We rode up the grass track – a gentle slope towards the top of the lake. John took a picture of me, to show that I CAN ride up hills – very gentle ones … Though more seasoned cyclists might scoff that that track was “practically flat!”.

The gently sloping grass track (photo by John)

Here's proof that I CAN ride up (gentle!) slopes ... (photo by John)

In the distance, towards the right, I could see a sign post and a track leading steeply up the hill, and I said to John, “when it gets that steep, I’m quitting”. But that’s not where we went.

We came to a sign that pointed the way to the Old Pencarrow Lighthouse, on top of the hill. Twenty minutes, it said. “Noooo!” I said, “it’s too steep!”. “Aw, come on” said John, “it’s only 20 minutes”. Yeah right, pushing a bike up the hill, it was more like 35 minutes.

Twenty minutes up to the old lighthouse - more like 35!

But it was so worth it! The track wasn’t too bad, really. Too steep to cycle up, but OK to walk, and it was wide and smooth, on grass. On the way, there were several display boards providing information about the Pencarrow Lighthouse – when and why it was built, diagrams of its construction, what life was like for the lighthouse keepers and their families, and when and why it was finally decommissioned, and handed over to the Historic Places Trust.

One of the information display boards

Pencarrow was New Zealand’s first permanent lighthouse. It was officially opened in 1859.

The plaque on the Old Pencarrow Lighthouse

It originally had an oil-burning lamp, which was later converted to cheaper kerosene at first, and then to an incandescent oil vapour lamp in 1908. Because it was often shrouded in fog, a fog signal was added to the station in 1898 (the first of its type in the country) and in 1906 a secondary lighthouse was built at the beach below.
 
In 1935, the top lighthouse became redundant when NZ’s first automated light was built at Baring Head, further along the coast, as it was a more prominent landmark for shipping. Keepers remained on the Pencarrow site to tend to the fog signal until 1960. The lower lighthouse is still in use today.

After a fair climb we came to a gap in the hill, and there in front of us and below, was the view over the harbour, Cook Strait, and the Pencarrow coast road we had cycled on. What a magnificent sight.

The road that we had come from, and the lighthouse that we were heading for. (photo by John)

According to the information board, this had been the site of the lighthouse keepers’ houses, being the most sheltered part of this frequently wind-battered hillside.

The site of the lighthouse keepers' houses

But it was still a way to the lighthouse itself. From here the track became rough, and very steep. I refused to take the bike any further. I wouldn't be game to ride down it again, so there was no point in taking the bike up there. John worried about leaving the bikes unattended. But there was no one around – we had the place completely to ourselves! So he locked the bikes together with a cable lock – just in case …

This track was longer and steeper than it appears on this photo. John locked our bikes together.

From the hollow, the lighthouse had not seemed terribly far. Very deceptive. We went up, then down, then round and up again, and eventually got there. Just before we got to the top, I could hear a low rumbling, and guessed it might be the Interisland ferry.

When we reached the top - Wow! What a view! Below us was not just the ferry coming into the harbour, but also a cargo ship steaming out.

The interisland ferry Kaitaki entering the harbour, and a cargo ship heading out

We could see the coast road we rode on directly below us. To the north we could see the harbour with its islands Matiu (Somes Island) and Mākaro (Ward Island), and the Tararua Ranges beyond the Hutt Valley; opposite us the city; and to the south we could see the South Island, where we could just detect a small amount of snow still on the Seaward Kaikoura Range. While Wellington was suffering its storm, the Kaikouras received a big dump of snow, but the warm north-west wind of the past week has melted most of it again.

Wellington Harbour (photo by John)

Facing the other way, the hills, and below, Lake Kohangapiripiri with its gorgeous reflections.

Lake Kohangapiripiri seen from the Lighthouse (photo by John)

Of course we took loads of photos, only some of which I can show here. The lighthouse itself is a handsome white tapering octagonal tower with a balcony all around the light, and a weathervane on the top. That weathervane must be really strong, as it will have been battered by some of the worst winds NZ can muster, and survived!

The Old Pencarrow Lighthouse (photo by John)

It was about four o’clock by now, and it was time to get going, as there would only be another hour or so of daylight. Where we left the bikes, there was a stile, and a sign showing another track, to get back to the coast road. It was very steep, very rough and very narrow. John wanted to go down that track, as “it would be quicker”, but this time I put my foot down. No way was I going down that track – just walking it would do my knees in, and it wasn’t even wide enough to be able to walk beside your bike.

The bottom of the track I refused to go down

The grass track back to the lake was relatively easy to ride, though I did keep a good grip on my brakes. When we got to the bottom, the entrance to the lake track was in deep shade, but the water reflected the sky and the fenceline – quite magical.

Magic in the shadows (photo by John)

The way back to Eastbourne seemed like a long haul. A bit of a northerly had sprung up, and that didn’t help. Long before we got back to Burdan’s Gate, I was looking out longingly for the buildings of Eastbourne to appear, but there was always yet another bay to go round. My thigh muscles and my tail were suffering by now too …

The late afternoon sun made the hills glow in a beautiful golden light. By the time we got back to Eastbourne, the sun had just gone behind the hills, and we took our final photos for the day of the orange sky across the harbour.

The last of the setting sun (photo by John)

What a great afternoon we had – we had biked 25 kms, had walked for 45 minutes, and been out for a total of three and a half hours. It was nearly six o’clock when we joined the peak-hour traffic up Ngauranga Gorge, so we picked up some fish and chips on our way through Johnsonville. I didn’t have time to cook dinner, as we were heading out again soon. It was Monday, which meant Scottish Country Dance club night! I did sleep well that night …

Wellington's South Coast

Last Thursday, 4 July, we decided to take our bikes to the Wellington South Coast. There were two reasons for our choice: one was that we had never cycled there yet; the other was to take a look at an area that had suffered severely in a recent storm. We wanted to see for ourselves how bad the damage was.

A bit of background: while we were safely away in Auckland a couple of weeks ago, Wellington was hit by a terrific southerly storm on 20 June, the shortest day. It was as bad as, or possibly worse than, the Wahine storm, which I have referred to in my posts about Pencarrow and Eastbourne (in April and June).

Wind gusts reached 140km/h, and up to 200km/h on the highest hills above Wellington. The south coast bore the brunt of the onslaught as the storm coincided with a “king tide” (an especially high tide that occurs only a few times each year). Ten-meter swells, straight from Cook Strait, battered the roads and buildings all around the bays. They tore up roads and seawalls, and threw debris, including huge rocks and enormous logs of driftwood, right across the road towards the houses. Roofs were lifted, houses and garages were flooded.

There was an enormous amount of damage all around the region, but the south coast seemed to have got the worst of it. This news website shows a bunch of photos, and numbers 4, 11, 24, 29, 36, 39, 43, 45, 47, 52, 57 and 58 show the damage done in the area we rode through on this ride. 

The day of our ride was calm and fine, and the sea was flat. We drove around the southern bays from Lyall Bay, and were pleased to see that there was a foot/cycle path all the way along to Owhiro Bay. All of the debris thrown up by the sea had been cleared away – all credit to the Wellington City Council and its crews – but you could still see places that had been damaged.

On the day of our ride, the sea was flat. John is particularly pleased with the perfect arc of the gentle little wave breaking on the beach (photo by John)

We left the car at a parking area by a boat-launching ramp at Owhiro Bay, that had obviously suffered the sea’s onslaught. A huge chunk of treetrunk was wedged on the edge, up against a signpost that was completely bent over. But all the debris had been cleared away.

The huge chunk of driftwood knocked the post right over (photo by John)

We first rode towards the Red Rocks Coastal Walk, which starts from the Te Kopahou Reserve, the next bay further round from Owhiro. We knew there was a walking/cycling track leading to Red Rocks, but had never checked it out before. Also we didn’t know, of course, how the storm had affected the area.

The damaged footpath near Owhiro Bay (photo by John)

The footpath on which we rode to get there, was OK in places, but very broken up in others. Further along, fences were festooned with debris, seaweed and rubbish.

Where the road stops, there is a track beyond the gates that is supposed to go round to Red Rocks and further along to the seal colony at Sinclair Head. However, about 200m of the track had been obliterated, covered in storm debris, so we decided we’d have to do that another day.

The track did not look promising ... (photo by John)

I have since found out that the track is rather rough and that you’d need a pretty sturdy bike to ride it. Our little folding bikes would not stand up to it. Whew! I didn’t fancy the ride very much anyway. It looks too much like hard work! Maybe we should walk the track one day. Better still, take a tour with Kiwi Coastal Tours, which we heard about in the café, at the end of our ride.

It is an amazing area, very wild and beautiful. The rocks are enormously high, rather inhospitable-looking. They have a terraced look, and I wondered whether at some time in the past it had been a quarry. It turns out that in fact it was quarried from early in the 20th century. 

Inhospitable rocks

 

Near the gate was a large board with Tsunami information – what to do after a long (more than one minute) earthquake, and where to run to. A map showed the areas most prone to being swamped, and it is extensive. Seeing the damage that “just” a storm can inflict, a tsunami must be truly terrifying and quite devastating.

Fascinating, and scary ...

Also nearby is the Owhiro Bay Interpretation Centre. From a distance it appeared to have some displays, but we didn’t stop to check it out. There was a lovely bronze sculpture of a shark in a nice garden next to it.

Bronze sculpture of a shark - Frenzy - by Colin Webster-Watson

After riding back past Owhiro Bay, we got to Island Bay. We had seen in online videos of the storm that the seawall by the surf club had been completely smashed in places. The footpath was torn up, but all the rubbish had now been cleared away, and where the seawall had been smashed, there were now large boulders, put there by the Council, I assume. There were still sandbags around the base of the surf club, and great sheets of plywood blocking windows and doors.

Ripped-up footpath and road at Island Bay (photo by John)

Boulders replace the smashed seawall

The island Taputeranga in the bay, looked very peaceful on this lovely day, and as always, it reminded me of the Famous Five stories – the ones where they track down smugglers or other villains on an uninhabited island off the coast during their “hols”. Ah, the stuff of childhood dreams …

Taputeranga Island in the middle of Island Bay (photo by John)

In fact the island, which gives the area its name of Island Bay, was at one time the site of a Māori Pā. The normally sheltered bay later became a settlement for Italian, Greek and Shetland fishing communities. The bay is still being used to moor their fishing boats.

Fishing boats moored in Island Bay (photo by John)

Further round near Houghton Bay, the road rises high above the beach. In some places the cliff had been undermined and a bit of the footpath had slipped down the hill. Bright orange safety netting surrounded the area.

A collapsed footpath near Houghton Bay (photo by John)

I looked up at “The Pines”, where my friends, members of the Ngaio and Tawa Scottish Country Dance Clubs, were celebrating a mid-winter dinner on that stormy night. It is quite high above the road, and looked serene today, but it will have been rather wild up there on that night. I am told the whole building shook, and the staff had had the foresight to brace the French doors with timber, and to secure the windows with duct tape. While we were in Auckland and saw all the mayhem on TV, I wondered whether the dinner had gone ahead, and I was glad to hear later, that everyone had got home safely that night.

"The Pines" Function Centre

Near Lyall Bay, the footpath became a boardwalk edged by flaxes for some distance – to protect the dunes, I think – rather pretty. We came to a point where there was a sculpture in the style of the Rapanui (Easter Island) statues, which had been donated by the government of Chile on the occasion of their president’s state visit to NZ in 2004.

Rapanui-style statue, donated by the people of Chile (photo by John)

Along Lyall Bay, by the Maranui Surf Club, all was as usual, with lots of sand on the footpath and along the road edges. The beach seemed to have been re-arranged by the storm, the tide’s edge was all scalloped, instead of one long sweep, and of course there were a huge piles of seaweed and other debris on the beach.

Beach sand, blown onto the road and footpath, is a regular feature at Lyall Bay (photo by John)

Debris on the beach at Lyall Bay (photo by John)

The sand caused us to have to get off our bikes a few times, as you just can’t ride through deep sand. We rode around Lyall Bay, and towards the tunnel which goes under the airport runway. A carpark at the end of the bay looked pretty ripped up, and there was a lot of rocky debris along the road. In the tunnel it looked as though water and debris had been in there too, the foot/cycle path was fairly caked with mud.

Entrance to the tunnel under the airport runway (photo by John)

The muddy footpath shows that rocks, debris and water made their way into the tunnel for quite a distance (photo by John)

We carried on beyond the tunnel as far as the junction with Moa Point Road. There we turned around, deciding we would do the rest another day. A good thing as it turned out, because when we drove home round the bays, we found that the foot/cycle path actually finished there.

On our way back we noted some houses where repairs were being made, one of them, had obviously had its roof damaged in the storm.

Damaged houses (photo by John)

Near Island Bay, I stopped to take a photo of the “Lighthouse”, which is actually just a lighthouse-shaped B&B. Then, as I had to step off the footpath, I noticed the quirkiness of the next two houses. One had two concrete horses’ heads on a parapet, and the other had a balcony shaped like a life boat. A bit further along there is another B&B, called "The Keep", run by the same people as "The Lighthouse".

"The Lighthouse"

Love that life boat balcony!

"The Keep" (photo by John)

We arrived back at Owhiro Bay, having ridden 19 kms, in two and a half hours. We drove round to The Bach Café for a late lunch. We had seen this café and its owners on the video footage online, and the devastation of the carpark in front of it. The carpark was all ripped up by the storm, but had now been bulldozed to nearly level.  

We talked to the woman serving at the counter, expressing our amazement that all looked so tidy so soon after the storm (two weeks) and she said the Council had been “friggin’ fantastic” in the clean up. While we were eating, the owner, Maraea, came to talk to us as well. She said that the café itself had had no damage. Miraculously, it must be in a little micro-climate of its own. She said she could not believe that the picnic tables on the deck had hardly moved even at the height of the storm. There had been debris thrown all the way across the carpark and the road, but the café had survived unscathed.

Apparently they were open on the day after the storm and continued to serve coffee and meals to Council workers and members of the public clearing up the devastation. Unlike more than 25,000 Wellington households, they did not lose their power. It appears that restoring power to everyone was a far more complicated job than clearing debris, as many homes were still without electricity several days after the storm.

The tables on the deck of "The Bach Café" hardly moved during the storm ...

We chatted about the Owhiro Bay area, where her family has owned the café for over a decade, and she told us about Kiwi Coastal Tours, which is run by her husband Gary, and which takes people on four-wheel-drive tours around the coast, to Red Rocks, the seal colony and introduces partakers to the area's Maori history. It sounds like a much better way to explore the wilds than walking or cycling. 

We drove home the long way round, all around the bays and the Miramar Peninsula. We saw more evidence of storm damage in quite a few places, like Karaka Bay and Breaker Bay, but I was glad to see that the dolphin sculpture outside the very modern house in Breaker Bay was still in its spot.

It is a beautiful drive, and it would be ideal for cycling, if it wasn’t for the fact that it is a narrow, winding road. There is not much of a shoulder for cyclists, so it is not very safe. All the same, many cyclists, braver than me, seem to ride there, especially on sunny weekends. John suggested that they should make it a one-way road, with a nice cycle lane. Wouldn’t that be great. I think it would be a great asset to the city.

Island Bay on a good day (photo by John)

The peaceful view belies the recent devastation (photo by John)