Parahaki ride

I had another crappy sleep last night, slightly achy from the day, but it was so hot. At least I was up reasonably early and on the road on time for my drive up to Whangarei. The weather was again beautiful, though again the forecast was for cloudy and showers. As I was making good time I stopped for a coffee in Welsford and too take a couple of photos by the oil refinery at Marsden Point. Te photos were a waste of time but I did get some quite good shots at two ‘sail’ statue thingies outside of town.

Sail


I was meeting an old Vorb buddy, Geoff, at the information centre and snapped some graffiti while I waited. We had a short drive to the trails at Parahaki and I was really looking forward to riding there for the first time. The trails are mainly in a forested area of the park and are very exposed, so the clay surface is as hard as concrete. The riding was pretty good, mix of short XC and freeride trails, though we took most of it slowly as I was on a rest day and Geoff is recovering from an injury. We had a good ride and over two and half hours covered most of the trails in the park.

The Cindercone at Parahaki



Some of the trail network


Geoff on the final climb back to the car

I forgot to put sun tan lotion on and ended up getting a little bit burnt on the ride.

On the way back to Auckland I snapped a few more photos and stopped for a quick swim at Uretiti.

The drive was not too bad on the way home, until I hit the big hill north of Maharangi when the traffic just stopped, it too over an hour to cover the next 12 or so KM’s to the highway, it was very frustrating.