After Auckland and Parnell, we hired a car to tour Northland for a week.
It’s definitely worth taking time to visit this end of North Island – it may not have the hot springs etc that the central area does, but it is beautiful. We went up the west coast, with its stunning beaches (including one called Omaha)
and quirky towns like the bohemian Puhoi (famous pub, which is almost a museum in itself, good food and live music),
Orewa which had a great repair cafe that saved Andy’s hoodie from disrepair, Warkworth (named after the village in Northumberland and with streets called Morpeth and Alnwick), Waipu (home of Scottish settlers and they still hold Highland Games. They also have some good information boards in the town about the first world war and people from the town), Whangarei with its Hundertwasser Art Centre, amazing clocks (a huge sundial with movable numerals to account for daylight saving time changes and an amazing ball drop clock) and beautiful waterfalls,
Kawakawa (world famous WC – Hundertwasser again) and the steam railway and then historic Russell in the Bay of Islands, home of Flagstaff Hill of the Flagstaff War between the British and the Maori and not forgetting the Waitangi Treaty Grounds (we didn’t get to visit this historic site as we ran out of time – it quite expensive and probably needs several hours to do it justice). We travelled up the “tail” of the Island to the top and walked down to Cape Reinga Lighthouse – a fabulous spot.
The sand dunes along this tail are amazing and of course, on the east side of the tail lies 90 mile beach (only about 55 miles apparently but still stunning). Then on down the east side, past more stunning coasts of huge sand dunes and on down the Kauri coast, through huge forests of Kauri trees, including the ‘Lord of the Forest’ standing at 51.5 metres and which has a girth of 13.77 metres (quite a sight).
It’s more cattle than sheep up here and at present there are LOTs of tiny calves, we’ve seen acres of avocado trees and eaten yummy Kumara chips (like a sweet potato), seen creepy looking long finned eels
and stayed in some super BnBs, motels, holiday parks and AirBnBs along the way. Oh, and we also found the building used as the police station in the TV series Brokenwood Mysteries that we like – it’s the old post office in Helensville. The Puhio pub also appeared in it!
