After breakfast we set off for the Karangahake Gorge as there are a couple of historic walks around the old mining area. The first is called the windows walk and although it should be circular, unfortunately there has been a landslide which should have been fixed by now but hasn’t so we couldn’t walk back along the river but we could get along the windows section. You start by walking through the old Battery which did exactly what it sounds like it would it batters rocks to get the gold and silver out, then we joined the rail Line which carried the ore out of the mountain. What I didn’t know when we started this walk is that I suffer from some kind of claustrophobia. I didn’t think the windows walk would be along a tunnel with little windows that occasionally provided a bit of light but for most of it you couldn’t see the entrance or exit which I was really uncomfortable with, interestingly I was fine on the way back so it must be something about not knowing the way. Anyway the views out across the gorge were great and once we got out of the tunnel it was really nice scenery. We walked down to the river where the pathway should take us back but instead of turning right we went left to Crown Mines which is another mine further up river, it was then time to go back through the tunnels which as I said wasn’t so bad the second time! Once we got through them we were just taking our jackets off and a couple we had met asked if we had seen the glow worms which we hadn’t so we had to go back in luckily not to far and we saw our first glow worms. We then continued the walk and set off in search of the train tunnel which was built to transport goods and product into the mine as they needed coal and timber to keep the pump houses working. This tunnel was massive so I didn’t have the same problem but impressively it was 1km long. By the time we finished both walks it was lunchtime so we went to a bistro that the owners of the apartment had recommended. Lunch was great and after we finished we set off for the Victorian Battery which is a ruin but was built to process the ore from Martha Gold Mine I had found a self guided walk around the site and we spent an interesting hour or so trying to match ruins to the description we had! Our final stop of the day was Bowentown which is the end of the peninsula we are staying on, we drove as far as we could the got out and walked to the top of the two hills the first was quite an easy walk and we had good 360 degree views, the second was hard work to get up but once we were at the top the view along the beach and to the town was amazing. By this time it was about 6pm so we went back to the room to relax and plan tomorrow.
It all looks so amazing and beautiful, I’d be tempted to stay! You are two lucky devils.
We have to agree! In some respects the rolling green hills of the countryside is very reminiscent of the English countryside it is understandable why so many english immigrants feel at home. We’re running out of words to describe how fantastic the scenery is and we’re told it will be even more spectacular when we get to the more mountainous South Island (we arrive there on the 7th November).