Urban Park Walks

Like many of the places we’ve visited in New Zealand, Auckland has a number of lovely parks and reserves that make you feel like you are out of the big city. Bob figured out a nice walk for us on Tuesday that took us through a number of parks, reserves, and shared use paths not too far from our neighborhood.

We began with a walk to and around the cute little lake in Western Springs Park about 15 minutes from our house. It is located next to the Auckland Zoo and Museum of Transportation and Technology both of which are quite popular now with families whose kids are out on break for the winter holiday. We stuck to the park and enjoyed the beautiful surroundings and animals (though not so much the goose poop).

Next to the Western Springs Park we stumbled on the Fukuoka Garden which was created to honor Auckland’s sister city relationship with Fukuoka, Japan. It a free little tranquil garden between the park and the zoo.

We then walked a bit further on into the Westmere neighborhood through two nature reserves, one of which brought us along the coast (an inlet of the Hauraki Gulf).

The first reserve was a relatively small bush reserve called Jaggers Bush Reserve, so I thought we should move like Jagger but there were other people about so we just hummed the song while we walked.

The second reserve, the Meola Reef Reserve, was larger and was formed by the longest lava flow in the Auckland Volcanic field. It has both on and off leash areas for dogs.

The marshy area of the reserve as you enter from the street

After that we started heading back towards Mount Albert via the Point Chevalier neighborhood. We stopped for a picnic lunch on the grounds of the massive (at least land-wise) Unitec Institute of Technology and then continued on to do a grocery run via a shared use path and then onto Oakley Creek Walkway which had us back to nature again before getting to the store.