Take the pathway to happiness

By GEOFF CHAPPLE

A year ago I walked North Shore City's coastline from Long Bay to Devonport, starting an hour before low tide. It was a tide-dependent route, across the sandy beaches, around the sometimes slippery rock of the headlands, and I waded the last bit through to Cheltenham Beach hip-deep in the tide.

Walking the route again the other day, there was no hurry, and no need to get my feet wet. Te Araroa Trust and North Shore City have now signed through an all-tide walking route, due to open on Sunday.

Its urban trail links the city's existing clifftop walks with the main beaches, many of the parks and the prettiest streets, from Long Bay to a rock at Windsor Reserve, Devonport.

That rock was my destination as I headed steeply uphill from Long Bay on the first of the new trail's clifftop paths, humming a snippet from the poem that will be cast in bronze to mark the trail's opening, The Shore by C.K. Stead.

Immediately beyond Long Bay the track reaches its highest point - 40 metres above sea level. Gulls hung on the updraft and, out to sea, a ship was eerily adrift above the visible horizon. Between the two lay the winking Gulf and its islands.

Rubbish collection day. This was an urban walk, and my second suburban link road, Rewi St, was lined with bulging orange bags. Before I started this walk, one of my friends, an urban walker from way back, took me by the shoulders and told me I had to dismiss the idea that this walk was just another long tramp.

Urban walking - "strolling," she said meaningfully - was psychological. Urban strollers would remain attentive to the lives of others. Like any good novelist they would invent narratives from the fragmentary conversations they overheard. They would note the status display of the citizens and their houses, how the people dress and behave.

Okay, so the dusties running alongside the rubbish truck wore practically nothing. Moreover, the passing and repassing of the diesel exhaust was gradually airbrushing me black, but when the truck turned off, I actually missed its filthy company.

The suburbs were now quiet. The odd whine of a circular saw, the banging in of a nail. Here and there, the gentle opening or shutting of a ranch slider, a woman with a baby in her arms, turning away behind glass. At 8.45am, the streets were already warm, and heavy with the scent of flowers.

Around me now too, exposed in the gullies, was what my friend called the urban forest, lush in these parts, many of them natives, but a profusion of exotics: the purple-flowering lilac tree, the bristling red bottlebrush, the pink toon tree, the aspiring Norfolk pine ...

I walked Sharon Rd, watching for an extraordinary sight I'd first spotted here from my previous tidal walk - a lap pool with a glass end, protruding over the crumbling cliffs between Torbay and Browns Bay - but saw only the back of postmodern mansions astride the headland.

A woman called from behind a high paling fence: "Do you want some biccies? Come here. Come here. Good girl." And en passant - for the sophisticated urban stroller should never actually stop and stare - I saw a whippet suddenly grabbed and held for the kind of vigorous hosedown which no amount of biscuit will ever recompense.

So to the first cup of coffee, and the plundering of the water cooler at the Ocean Breeze Cafe, Browns Bay. On past the sewer upgrade at the end of the bay, to the Clifftop Walkway and steep steps where a woman jogger passed me three times, running up, then down, then back up sideways as you might ascend with skis on a steep snow slope.

Beyond Rothesay Bay, I linked to the longest headland walk, the Gumdiggers Trail. On this wonderful path the cabbage trees held out candelabra-shaped flowerheads across the track and the cliff-edge was fringed with native trees, flax and flowers. Here, I heard my first tui and dozens of walkers passed by, nodding a morning greeting.

So to View Rd, and Possum Ladder, a verdant tunnel, fenced either side and planted with fat red roses, descending finally on the council's new staircase to Campbells Bay. Then along Kennedy Park's clifftop, with Rangitoto now gradually assuming a more classical shape, and walking through to the old earthworks of Rahopara Pa and down to Castor Bay.

To Milford Beach and the 2km walk to Takapuna. The issue with owners between the two beaches who have title down to the mean high water mark seems resolved now, partly through their generosity, partly through the forcing pressure of customary usage.

North Shore City Council includes this section in its Heritage Walk, and an accompanying brochure lists architectural sites that range from original cottages to late-modernist architecture. Here too, a flow of lava once poured across an ancient forest, leaving from felled or standing trees, long since rotted out, the hollow imprints of their trunks in the rock.

At Takapuna it was 12.20pm, lunch hour. The office crowd was on the beach with its trousers rolled or its skirts hiked, and I stopped to buy a hamburger and a pair of sunglasses. On to Narrow Neck and Cheltenham, though until the council joins a few more coastal dots, and takes this 3km link closer to the sea, this section is predominantly a road walk.

At Cheltenham Beach, the present marked route directs you down Cheltenham Rd, but in the not too distant future the Coastal Walk is likely to go round the base of North Head. At present, the North Head track goes just three-quarters of that distance.

A Devonport citizen group is negotiating its completion with clifftop landowners who have property rights across the unfinished section to mean high water mark, and this track, with yachts ghosting past, old gun emplacements and the metropolitan skyline appearing suddenly through a screen of pohutukawa trees, will be exactly the final jewel needed to complete a memorable 23km walk through North Shore City.

So here's what I did - picked my way past DoC's "Warning: No Access" sign and security fence, walking carefully onward below the mean high water mark, and out through the Navy's boatyards.

Along King Edward Parade to Devonport to pat the rock and finish the route in an unhurried six-and-a-half hours.

I raised a glass at the Esplanade Hotel to the impending opening of what will become, I suspect, one of metropolitan Auckland's most popular long walks.

Case notes

Opening

Allison Roe will open the North Shore City Coastal Walk at 9am on Sunday at Windsor Reserve, Devonport, and at 9.30am will lead a walk to Takapuna. There will be a sausage sizzle and music at the Strand from 11am to 1pm.

Difficulty

The Coastal Walk is four-season and a high standard throughout, aside from a couple of fairly easy rocky scrambles south of Thornes Bay. Wear a hat and take water.

Transport

Fullers Auckland operates regular ferries between Auckland and Devonport.

For timetable information call (09) 367 9102 or go to www.fullers.co.nz.

Stagecoach Auckland runs regular bus services between Auckland, Takapuna and Long Bay.

For bus timetable information phone Rideline (09) 366 6400 or go to Rideline

Trail information

North Shore City Council will have brochures available soon, including a map. A brochure and map is also available on Te Araroa Trust's website. Go to Teararoa and press the maps button.