Churton Park

Oh dear, I am getting way behind on my blog posts – again. Better get on with it and catch up.

On Tuesday 26 October, we did a short ride around our suburb, Churton Park. It is one of the few areas in Wellington where there is still room for expansion. There is a lot of work going on to the north and east of Melksham Drive – new roads being built, with the sections all prepared for building houses, and new houses going up on completed roads. The new roads go so far up the hills, I shouldn’t be surprised if, eventually, there will be a road over the hill to Tawa. John took a lot of photos.

Melksham Drive

New roads are going in to the left and right of this gully

Some roads look ready for houses to be built …

…while others are still very much in the earthworks stage

It looks like the roads will go “over the hills and far away” – to Tawa?

After exploring where we could, we rode up to the top of Melksham Drive, where it morphs into Amesbury Drive, and John was amused to find that one of the side streets was called Bickerton Rise. Since he restored a Bickerton folding bike not so very long ago, he couldn’t resist taking a photo of the street sign.

Bickerton Rise

PS - Last week (4 December), as we were biking down to our local café, we noticed that the hilside above Stebbings Dam is being carved up as well, so of course John had to record that.

More Churton Park expansion – viewed from Westchester Drive (photo by John)

Waikanae – Peka Peka

On 24 October, we went for yet another ride on the Kapiti Coast. This time we parked at Waikanae, near the Waimanu Lagoons, and biked to Peka Peka. We biked down Rutherford Drive and Paetawa Road – the way we used to go, before the Expressway was built with its handy cycle track.

Nothing very new to write about there, but we took some nice photos on the way back. We went back on the Expressway track, but diverted off it at the Waikanae River Bridge. We rode down to the northern bank of the river.

The Expressway Waikanae Bridge and the track down to the river (photo by John)

The track led under the bridge and we found that the pillars had interesting Māori designs on them. These designs were developed in collaboration with the local iwi, Te Atiawa.

Under the bridge (photo by John)

The pillars feature Māori designs, developed by the local iwi, Te Atiawa (photo by John)

We made our way along the river track to the estuary, and the Waimanu Lagoons. These lagoons are a great habitat for a lot of birdlife, and as we biked around the lagoons, we spotted nesting cormorant (shags) in one of the big trees, and a gaggle of fluffy yellow goslings.

The track along the estuary (photo by John)

A gaggle of goslings (photo by John)

Nesting cormorants

We only did 22 km that day, but it had been lovely to be out in the sunshine.