Auckland: Coast to Coast Walk

Auckland from the Sky Tower

We read about the 16km Coast to Coast walk when we were planning our trip to New Zealand and it seemed such an improbable idea that we set aside today to do it. The walk goes from Waitemata Harbour (which leads out to the Pacific Ocean) to Manukau Harbour (which accesses the Tasman Sea), across the narrowest part of the North island, a route that was used by Maori for canoe portage. It is also effectively a walk across the sprawling city of Auckland, famously built around 50 extinct small volcanoes and accommodating a quarter of NZ's 4 million people. It is one of the least densely populated cities in the world.

The official route starts at the Ferry Building, but since we have already walked from our hotel to there and back twice, we decided to start at the hotel and pick up the route at Princes St, duplicating just a little of yesterday's city walk.

This time, instead of going through Albert Park at the Clock Tower, we turned left and wandered through Auckland University to eventually emerge at Auckland Domain, the city's finest park. It is centred on the extinct volcano known as Pukekawa and also houses the Auckland Museum, one of the city's main sights.

From this direction, you enter the Domain via a leafy path, loud with the noise of cicadas ...

.. and walk uphill, past a pond, to eventually find yourself beside a vast green playing field, beneath the cone of the volcano.

You leave the Domain at its southern extremity and now have quite a long section of road to negotiate. One landmark along here was Auckland School. This is no doubt a highly prestigious academic establishment, but we thought that its dominant building: a vast rectangular structure with churchy towers on each corner, in I suppose the Spanish Colonial style, was absolutely gross. It was brilliant white and covered in a sort of giant pebbledash, which we promptly christened stonedash.

Mercifully, soon after this we turned down a smaller road and soon reached the foot of the extinct volcano Mount Eden, Maungawhau to the Maori. It is the southernmost point of the land purchased from the Maori in 1860 to extend Auckland city. The volcano erupted from two craters 28,000 years ago, with the last eruptions from the southern crater filling the northern crater. The visible crater is 50m deep and the volcano is 196m high, making the highest natural point in the Auckland peninsula. The photo looks down into the crater from its southern lip; the north shore of Auckland and Rangitoto can be seen in the distance.

Off to the left is Eden Park, home of the Auckland Blues Super 15 rugby team. I have seen the stadium on the television often enough and it was great to see it in the flesh, albeit from some distance.

We had a bit of trouble finding the way down from the summit as a sign post was missing at a critical point. However, we did eventually and emerged into the suburb of Epsom, with many wooden colonial style houses, many of them single storey. After some distance through suburbia, noting the two bowls clubs, no doubt locked in fierce competition, we arrived at Alexandra Park, which extended over a main road into Cornwall Park. The initial section was quite narrow but had a fine row of palms beside the road.

The park was once the rural estate of Sir John Logan Campbell, an emigrant Scot who trained as a doctor, but became a very successful businessman and local dignitary. He donated it as a public park on the occasion of the royal visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York (later King George V and Queen Mary of England) in 1901 and named it in their honour.

You pass Acacia Cottage, one of the earliest surviving timber buildings in New Zealand, and the oldest in Auckland. Built in 1841, it was originally the home of Campbell and his business partner, William Brown and was located behind their store. It was relocated in 1920 from its original location off Shortland Street in the centre of Auckland.

Cornwall Park in turn leads into One Tree Hill Domain. Its centre is another former volcano, known as Maungakiekie to the Maori,which erupted from three craters at least 28, 500 years ago. The cone and its surroundings were an important Maori pa or hill fort and are said to have been home to a population of up to 5,000.

It all sounds a bit Tolkien, but the English name One Tree Hill derives from the single tree that grew there in 1840. That tree was chopped down in 1870 and efforts to grow replacement trees were only partially successful. The two final trees were the subject of attacks by Maori protesters in 1994 and 2000. Wags have renamed it (N)one Tree Hill.

The gold-tipped obelisk which is all that is at the summit now was not, as one might imagine, a replacement for the One Tree. It was instead constructed in accordance with John Campbell's will to commemorate his admiration for the Maori people. There is a statue of a Maori warrior near the base.

Looking ahead, it was now possible to see Manukau harbour and our destination.

We now walked back down the road through the park and emerged on Manukau Road. A somewhat tortured route took in a loop around the busy Royal Oak roundabout and past Jellicoe Park, with its rather extravagant entrance.

Another mile of road led to the official end of the walk in Beachcroft Avenue. This was really odd. You are faced by a lagoon with a motorway on the other side, and you can't see the harbour at all. We spotted a footbridge over the motorway which we had just decided to take, when a passing motorist stopped to explain that that was indeed what we should do. The spontaneous helpfulness of kiwis was something we saw quite a lot.

We crossed the bridge and finally reached a sort of beach at the edge of the harbour. I have taken my best Joe Cornish-style photo, with a low camera angle and lots of foreground, but nothing I could do makes this anything other than quite desolate and disappointing. We could have been in Weston-super-Mare. Even the ducks on the stream were Mallards!

The next problem was to get back to our hotel. We walked into Onehunga and found a taxi, which added yet more distance to an already long walk.

Conditions: dull, but pleasantly warm.

Distance: 13 miles in all. The furthest we have ever walked.

Rating: four stars. Some great bits, but also a lot of road and an extremely downbeat ending. Signposting eccentric in places and some indications that the route is not being maintained. A good sense of achievement though.