Miscellaneous rides

Here I am. I need to do some catching up.

We did a couple of rides without taking any photos. One was a local “errands ride”, to the Resene shop in Johnsonville, then to our local café in Middleton Road, and home via the supermarket. Not very exciting, but good to be able to do these things without using the car.

Tawa to Mana

On Sunday 11 October, we started out from Takapu Road station. Being a weekend, there was plenty of parking there. We biked on Te Ara Tawa, beside the railway line and through Linden to Porirua. The only photo we took was of a little waterfall in the Porirua Stream, where a shag (cormorant) was sunning itself on a rock.You'll need to click on the photo to enlarge it if you want to see the shag ...

Porirua Stream near the Linden sportsground (photo by John)

We carried on towards Aotea, past the Aotea Lagoon and the Police College. Across the footbridge at the Paremata railway station, and on towards Mana, where we stopped for lunch at Café Ruby. It was a sunny afternoon and the café was busy, so we were there for quite a while.

Back the way we came, and at the new subdivision of Aotea, we decided to explore the new streets for a bit. We are looking to have our house re-roofed and painted, so we were interested to see the various treatments and colour schemes in the new houses. We also stopped and looked into a couple of the half dozen show homes that were open for viewing. Very nice!

We did about 32 km on this ride.

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Miramar Peninsula

On Tuesday 20 October, a lovely calm day, we decided to do another ride to the Ataturk Memorial, high up on the Miramar Peninsula. We parked the car at Greta Point, and biked around Evans Bay and Cobham Drive to Miramar, from where we headed uphill. Last time we got ourselves a bit confused and had trouble finding Bowes Crescent from where we could get access to the Ataturk Memorial. No such problems today.

The memorial reserve sits on a steep promontory above Tarakena Bay, looking out to Cook Strait. On a bright sunny day like this, its white cylinder stands out sharply against the blue sea.

The Ataturk Memorial looks out over Cook Strait (photo by John)

At the memorial (photo by John)

The last time we were up here, there was a terrific southerly swell, and the waves created a chevron of foam as they rolled in from both sides onto the rocks off the headland. This time, however, the view was peaceful and we revelled in the beautiful colours of the water.

The seas around the rocks were beautifully calm (photo by John)

After an interesting chat with a couple from Auckland, we biked down the wide track to Moa Point Road, and rode around the peninsula to Breaker Bay. We stopped at the carpark near the beach for a closer look at the rocks. In the distance we could see Steeple Rock, which is near where the Interisland ferry Wahine sank in 1968.

The rocks at Breaker Bay, with Steeple Rock in the top one-third of the photo (photo by John)

Looking across the harbour entrance to the Pencarrow Lighthouse.
You can see Barrett Reef – the cause of the sinking of the Wahine (photo by John)

After the Pass of Branda – which sounds worse than it is – we rode through the suburb of Seatoun, round Worser Bay, and to Scorching Bay, where we had lunch at the Scorch-O-Rama Café.

A pleasant ride around the rest of the peninsula took us back to our car. We had done 26 km.