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Makara — Titahi Bay day trip 27 January (OK, so it takes me a long time to do a trip report...!) Harry Smith
he Wellington region is fortunate inhavinglong I Some cunning route-finding enabled us to avoid stretches of rugged undeveloped coastline, the scrub, and we soon found ourselves stopping for which provide interesting day trips (and they a rest on top of the spur, high above sea level, with sure beat the hell out of grovelling in knee-deep mud awesome views spread out before us up and down and bucketing rain in the Tararuas!). Over the years the coast. To the north lay Mana and Kapiti islands, I’ve explored virtually all of it, but because of transport like giant ships anchored permanently in place in the difficulties one bit had long eluded me, and that is a sea; to the south lay Makara Beach, where we had section north of Pipinui Point on the long, isolated stretch of coastline between Makara Beach and Titahi Bay. I had been up the coast from Makara Beach in the south, and down the coast from Titahi Bay in the north, but these trips hadn't quite overlapped, and a stretch of 5 or 6 kilometres remained in the middle. In January I finally knocked this last section off =i SEs when Angela Barnes, Trish Knox, Lorraine hors se Kaluza and I did a day trip along this whole stretch of coastline from Makara Beach to Titahi Bay. Grant Newton solved our transport problems by volunteering to drop us off at Makara Beach in the morning, and we planned to get a bus and train back from the Titahi Bay end. Arriving out at Makara Beach, we were met with a pleasant surprise. To head northwards up the coast you normally have to ford Makara Stream, which, depending on the state of the tide, can be over waist deep, but on this occasion we found the gravel beach had formed a dam right across the mouth of the stream! I had been expecting to get wet shorts; instead we strolled across without even getting our feet wet! An hour and a half’s walk brought us to Boom Rock, though with the calm seas it failed to live up to its name. The next short section around Pipinui Point is impassable at sea level, so we scrambled up the rocks into the mouth of Pipinui Stream. There is not much fresh water on this coast and I had been planning to refill my water bottle here, but alas, on this occasion the stream was virtually bone dry. It was several hours later before we reached another water source.
Angela above Pipinui Point looking north Harry Smith
Trip Reports
On the beach south of Open Bay
come from; and beyond to the south were the bays and hillsides leading to Ohau Point in the far distance. Across to the west lay the hills of Arapawa Island and the Marlborough Sounds. A traverse across the hillside above near-vertical slopes brought us to an old four-wheel-drive track leading steeply back down to the beach. I was now in unknown territory, and despite the presence of a shipping container plonked on the beach to act as some sort of boat shed, the place felt remote and wild — you would hardly guess that you were probably not much more than 10 kilometres from downtown Wellington as the crows fly. A bit further north we stopped for lunch where a couple of Karaka trees up the bank provided some welcome relief from the blazing sun. Travel after lunch was mostly on shingly beaches, driftwood, seaweed and other debris, and brightly coloured plastic fishing buoys were common. But the beach walking proved tiring and by now we were in the heat of the afternoon sun, which beat down upon us mercilessly. After a couple of hours of this, just when the continuous shingle beaches were beginning to lose their appeal and seem more like a chore than fun, we finally rounded a corner and came to the grassy flats and gentler, more rounded hillsides of Open Bay. I was now back in known territory; Open Bay is a real gem — one of my all-time favourite little hidden spots in the greater Wellington area. A trickle of water in the stream enabled us to fill our water bottles. ] had finished off the last of my water soon after lunch and was feeling parched. We lay in the grass in the sun and relaxed for a while, then wandered around to the other side of the bay where there is a bit of a sandy beach. Angela and I went for a swim, and the water was warm. Continuing north, the open coastal flats soon gave way to more rocks and shingle. The last kilometre or two, around the headland into Titahi Bay, provided some sustained scrambling on fairly jagged, wavecut rocks. This section could be tricky at high tide, but you can avoid it if you want to by taking a track across the hillside. At last, at 5 o'clock we emerged onto Titahi Bay beach and back in civilisation — only beach was closed! Overall, an interesting and rather different day trip, and one which enabled me to fill in my last remaining blank on Wellington’s coastlines. More people should visit this stretch of coastline — but having said that, I have to admit that it’s a fairly long and tiring walk, and in the wrong weather conditions it could be a pretty bleak and unforgiving place. I'll do it again sometime, but probably not for a few years.
WT&MNC July 2001
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Harry Smith