Walks in, around and beyond Warkworth worth walking
Great View From the Vineyard: The open-ground project would not have come about without infrastructure planner Jo Floyd’s suggestion that under-utilised land at the Ōmaha wastewater treatment site, middle distance, could used for a trial. photographer Jonathan Barran
They’re billed as Warkworth Walks Worth Doing, though only one is actually in or around Warkworth.
There are seven, ranging from the relatively rigorous, to the summit of Tamahunga, to the trattoria-style Italian dinner at Herons Flight, whereby all the walking required is an easy sashey to the cash bar.
There is a $15 charge for most of the walks. The exceptions are Kawau Island, $52 including ferry and boxed lunch, and the Vineyard Trail, $35 includes bus, all wine tasting and platters at Ōmaha Bay Vineyard.
While soaking in the view from the Ōmaha Bay Vineyard, walkers—yes, walkers, the bus simply gets walkers to the first vineyard and retrieves ’em from the last—may reflect on the huge potential for the public land in the foreground as an open-ground indigenous plant nursery specialising in bulk plants for coastal restoration.
The inaugural Walks Worth Doing—couldn’t it be: Walks Worth Walking—deserves to become an annual event and could well broaden the support base for completing the Wilson Cement Works walkway and big picture of a network of trails. This network could one day extend from Waiwera to Cape Rodney, with the jewel in the crown a riverside route from Warkworth to Dawson Creek.
In November 1991, Friends of the Mahurangi distributed a questionnaire to more than 3000 households in the Mahurangi catchment. The questionnaire asks what locals think the Mahurangi would be like, and what they want it to be like in 25 years. In respect to walkways
- 41%
- thought it would be well established
- 83%
- wanted it to be well established
- 36%
- thought it would be just begun
- 6%
- wanted it to have only just begun.
The pattern of aspiration being about twice that of expectation was consistent through foreshore reserves, landscape, siltation and the balance the 10 topics covered.
With the Mahurangi Action Plan creating, for the first time ever, a coherent vision for the harbour and its hinterland, 2016 could just see the aspirations of the 83% if not fulfilled, then certainly filled with promise.
Booking Numbers are strictly limited, but bookings can be made online at the Warkworth Information Centre.