Te Araroa Trail Ocean Beach and Bream Head ** TA Highlight **
We were up at 5.30am today. Ros from Tidesong BnB made us a wonderful early brekkie of pikelets with crab apple jam and golden syrup plus cereal, toast and eggs. It was a perfect start to the morning!
Hugh gave Anja, Markus, Anouck and I a lift to the Kauri Mountain track trail head and we began our first climb of the day, to 245m elevation in a beautiful forest trail.
There were great views from the summit of our walk to come. Bruce stayed behind to interview Hugh and Ros for his radio show The Long Way Home.
Amazing Ocean Beach
After the forest trail, we walked 6kms the length of Ocean beach. It was a beautiful day, and I walked most of this barefoot. This was definitely a Te Araroa highlight so far.
Bream Head Walkway
The lengthy beack walk turned into a lengthy climb, up the Bream Head walkway Te Whara track.
We stopped for an early lunch pre-climb, and admired the spectacular views. We headed off up the steep pathway at around midday. We climbed up to the peak of 476m and were rewarded with magnificent views of the coast North and South as far as we could see.
It was a pretty strenuous section. We climbed up and down several more rocky peaks through beautiful forest before coming into Smugglers Bay around 4pm.
Around the Bays
A final 3km road walk (the most picturesque road walk so far) around Urquhart’s & McKenzie Bays led us to The Shores accomodation in Taurikura Bay.
Anja Markus and I checked into the apartment. It was wonderful, and had a brilliant shower and amazing bed.
Northland just keeps on giving.. today was without a doubt the best day on the trail for variety & spectacular scenery
