Title : Riding Northland's historic Twin Coast Cycleway
link : Riding Northland's historic Twin Coast Cycleway
Riding Northland's historic Twin Coast Cycleway
We took the kids up north a few weekends back to ride the 'Twin Coast Cycleway'. A two day, mostly off-road ride that starts (or ends, depending on which way you ride), on the Pacific Ocean at Opua in the Bay of Islands and finishes on the upper reaches of the Hokianga Harbour on the Tasman Sea side of the country.
It's a ride with plenty of variation in scenery from native bush, farmland and estuary boardwalk that takes in some tiny rural towns. It even includes riding past the back of a freezing works with animals penned up awaiting their demise. An interesting education for our city kids who rarely get to see where their food comes from!
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| Love the lines of this old launch at Opua, the start of the ride |
Being spring, it's a great time to do the trail from a wildlife point of view. The temperature is a touch warmer of course, but the country side is busy with calves, lambs, turkeys, piglets, paradise goslings and ducklings, chooks with chicks, a few malnourished looking puppies and a couple of cute kittens – plenty to keep the kids occupied when not cranking through the kilometres. And crank through the k's they did too, a bit older and stronger now they gave me even less time to sketch, definitely a case of sketch now and colour later.
Towards the end of the trail is The Māngungu Mission Station. It looks out from it's perch over the Hokianga Harbour, over a cemetery, a church, a bunch of mangroves and on to the northern end of the harbour.
The mission was the site of the largest signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Over 70 chiefs added their signature and apparently hundreds of waka were tied up in the bay below – it must have been quite a sight.
Obviously not all Māori chiefs were keen to sign this treaty with the Crown designed '....to ensure the welfare of Queen Victoria's subjects and to promote the health, civilisation, education and spiritual care of the natives....' Some chiefs had traveled to Sydney, Australia and seen first hand how the English were treating the Aboriginals and confiscated their lands.
They were right to be sceptical too – within 10 years 4 million acres of land had been confiscated or 'purchased'.
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| Māngungu Mission station, on the Hokianga Harbour - end of the trail |
We thought we were being clever by planning to finish just down the road at Horeke. Horeke is the site of New Zealand's oldest pub, and we had plans to relax and celebrate finishing the ride with a few laid back ales, and a sketch of course. Sadly the pub was closed, so here I finish with a sketch from the following day, Kerikeri's Stone Store, and to the right, Kemp House – New Zealand's first (european) house built around 1820, also the site of legendary Ngapuhi chief Hongi Hika's Kororipo pa site.
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