Atawhai Foothills. Organiser: Carl Horn
Party: Adriann Smith, Aine Byrne, Anne, Brenda & Shelley St Clair, Carl Horn, Chris Rabey, Eryl Gwynne, John Liman, John Olykan, Sara Simmonds, Sharan Foga, Trish Bennet.
We started our tramp by congregating in the Botanical Park below The Centre of New Zealand (what a coincidence that the centre of New Zealand is right on the top of a hill overlooking Nelson, and not in a clump of gorse halfway down the hill on the other side – actually a rough approximation seems to put the centre of New Zealand somewhere near Kumara, but it seems they’re not complaining, so here it is in Nelson, right on the top of one of our hills).
There was a bit of a kafuffle at the start because one of the party didn’t arrive on time which caused us to wait a while and delay our departure. As it turned out, further down Milton Street some distance from where we met they had seen a sign pointing to The Centre, so they parked there, took that route, and met us at the top (it was a time when a cell-phone would have been handy, but it seems that it was turned off).
The day was cloudy, bright, and dry, a comfortable day for tramping, with good visibility. From The Centre of New Zealand, the route was down to the saddle and up the other side onto the Atawhai Ridge Walk, which is actually a 4-wheel drive farmer’s dirt road, wide enough that pairs could walk abreast. Along the ridge we had excellent views not only of the Bay and the Abel Tasman National Park in the distance, but also looking the other way east up the Matai Valley to the valleys and mountains beyond. Rather than fight the gorse to take a shortcut, we stayed on the road until we came to a flat open area with an excellent outlook over the Bay, where we stopped for a convivial lunch. Then it was back the way we came, arriving back at our cars in the middle of the afternoon.
The walk, uh, tramp, had a highlight for me besides the views. That was watching Shelley St Clair walk almost the whole route without any whinging, at least none that I heard. Nor did she fall behind and require us to wait for her. It was only almost at the end, just before descending back to the Park below The Centre, that she was given any help by her mother Brenda. Shelley is all of two years old. I suspect that Shelley with her determination and perseverance may, in a few years, be one of those New Zealanders standing on a podium receiving a gold medal. She certainly provided an extraordinary performance that day.
Many of those along that day were not members of the club. They had seen the notice in The Leader and had decided to join us. As the cliché goes, a fine day was had by all.