Almost thirty people took the chance of seeing two new parts of the Te Araroa Trail connecting with the existing Mangawhai Cliffs Walkway, the first part beginning at the road to Waipu Cove, and the second part being the Goldschmidt track along the Mangawhai estuary. We left The Bracken at 8am and met up at the Sail Rock Café at Mangawhai Heads. Two cars were left at the finish point of the tramp nearby, before we went on to the starting point at the beginning of Bream Tail Rd. At 10:30am we set off, facing a steady half-hour grunt along 1.8km of private gravel road before we followed a track through farm land. Our elevenses stop was at the top of a hill with views out to Whangarei Heads. John commented that St Valentine’s Day was just three days away, being a traditional day of celebrating love. He read a poem Our Loving Dad describing how God loves us so much He gave us the beauty of His creation and eyes to behold it, music and ears to enjoy it, foods and tongues to enjoy the various tastes, cats and dogs we can have as pets and birds we can feed, work and the capacity to do it, sabbaths such as weekends for rest and recreation and worship, the natural healing processes in our bodies, discipline for our good, and salvation through Jesus Christ so that believers will escape the penalty of our sins and enjoy an everlasting perfect life beyond the grave. We dropped down into a gully and faced a steep climb through open pasture before entering a patch of bush to come out to the Mangawhai Cliffs Walkway about midday. Our lunch stop was half an hour along this well-formed scenic track with spectacular views of the coast with the Hen and Chickens in the distance. From there we carried on along the cliff tops before dropping down to the beach following it to the Mangawhai Heads carpark at the other end to come out at 1:30pm. The drivers decided to walk the roads to the finish point to pick up the two cars and go to the start point to get their cars. Some of us had a swim in the surf beach meanwhile. One hour later those who wanted to walked the short distance down the road to take the Goldschmidt track, while the rest went in the cars to the Sail Rock Café to exercise their wallets. This was a pleasant one hour walk along the shoreline of the estuary with views across to a peninsula of pure white sand dunes. We passed the campground before going up a flight of step to follow the clifftops.

We were all out at the Sail Rock Café by 3:30pm, and after coffee or icecreams we headed home to Auckland having had a very interesting day and lovely scenery. John, Andrew and Hunter stopped at the Windy Ridge Boy’s Farm on the way home. This was a rustic camp set up by Graham Crawshaw to run camps for illiterate boys; Graham had run camps for boys from broken homes in the 1960s-70s at Arapohue Bush Camp near Dargaville which John and Andrew went to at the time. THE GROUP: John McCarthy, Andrew Lethbridge (leaders), Hunter Wilson, Jill Smith, June Sinclair, Marian Kilgour, David Kilgour, Joy Whitehead, Gary Thompson, Margaret Thompson, Hilary Cullen, Alison Stewart, Tina Voordouw, Noreen McArthur, Annette Handley, Stella Tay, Sonia Dryden, Gay Atkins, Jules Riding, Lynn Riding, David Kippenberger, Ted Owens, Marge Owens, Lawrence Young, Garyun Young, Grant Dixon, Sharon Dixon, Colin O'Gorman, Coral Wong DISTANCE: 10.1km FASTEST SPEED: 7.7km/h AVERAGE SPEED:  4.1km/h COST: $21, or $22 for those travelling via the tolled motorway tunnels between Silverdale and Puhoi.