It rained heavily in the night, so today didn't look a good day for any walking trips. Instead we took a ride on the Driving Creek Railway. This was the brainchild/obsession of a man called Barry Brickell who started building a narrow gauge railway to get clay out of the hills for his pottery business.
Started in1973, opened to the public in 1990 and finished in 2002, the railway climbs over 100m along a mainline length of 3km. It includes 10 bridges (including a double decker bridge), 3 tunnels and 5 reversing points or switchbacks.
Some sections are lined with bricks, all fired in his own pottery, other side banks are built up with old tyres or walls of glass bottles. Pottery art and sculptures turn up in unexpected points. The end of the journey is at Eyefull Tower, a viewpoint overlooking Coromandal Town and the sea. A great journey with a very pleasant chat to our driver Paul, who was also a potter at the studio.
We then drove north until we ran out of paved road at Colville where we had lunch. Driving back to Coromandel Town we took the main road route over to the east coast of the peninsular. The coast there was flatter and had more open beaches.
We drove through heavy rain in Whitianga, then down to Hot Water Beach. This is an area where hot water springs are just below the sands, but are only accessible for about 2 hours either side of low tide. We arrived just as the tide was getting low enough
Everyone congregated in two small areas of the vast beach, digging shallow holes in the sand where you could enjoy the hot water bubbling to the surface. It was very localised, being too hot to stand in in one place, and being cold 50cm away.
We decided not to dig, but just to paddle and immerse our feet into the sand. It was a fun and quirky way to spend 1/2 hour, especially encouraging others to dig holes while we cheered them on. So strange to have scalding (literally) feet on a beach.
The tide was not really low enough, every now and again a large wave would rush in and destroy all the carefully dug holes. Spades could be rented at the local cafe, and they obviously made a good profit on them judging by the number of identical spades we saw in use.
Leaving the beach we drove back to our bach via an unpaved road, The 309 Road. This took us past a Kauri grove, and we had a chance to hug one of these immense trees. This was a Siamese twin tree. One of the other trees there was about 600 years old, so a seedling when the Maori first arrived in NZ and a sapling when Joan of Arc was around. Kauri trees can live up to 4000 years!
Back at our friendly bach/gite we BBQed steaks and avocados for dinner, then retired indoors away from all the small biting things.
Tomorrow we head south to Te Aroha to meet Robert and Stella for a couple of nights and to do some walking trips.
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