While central Devonport is the North Shore’s key sight, the surrounding area also has worthwhile spots. Sharing the tip of North Shore’s peninsula is Maungauka North Head Reserve. Maungauka is the area’s other dormant volcano. Like Mt. Victoria, this hill was once a military encampment with underground tunnels and gun emplacements. Now, it’s a grassy reserve with trees and walkways for nature lovers, historic relics for history buffs, and an upper parking area for hiking avoiders. It’s not as high as Mt. Victoria, but its views are impressive.
Not surprisingly, we chose to drive instead of walk to the upper lot. Still, there was plenty of walking to do once we got there, including a short hike to get to the tippy-top of the hill for photo ops and fantastic views. Other visitors were picnicking on the grass, walking through the tunnels, or watching the short films offered in the historic military buildings. This place had something for everyone and could easily fill an afternoon.
(Below, a few photos from North Head Reserve–you can click to enlarge and scroll through photos).
Below North Point’s east side sits a beach called Cheltenham, and beyond that is another former military site that’s now a park, the Fort Takapuna Historic Reserve (both of which are visible the first photo in the gallery above). It’s not all that well known, but its low grassy hills and seaside location make it a particularly nice area to take a stroll. If we lived here, we’d visit the volcano hills, but this is where we’d actually take regular walks.
Just north of Fort Takapuna is another of North Shore’s popular beaches, Little Neck Beach. It was nice enough, but now that we’d visited North Shore’s best-known beaches, our favorite was still the beach we first visited, Takapuna Beach. –Cyndi
Below, a few photos of Little Neck Beach, the Fort Takapuna reserve, and a view of Cheltenham and North Head.
New Zealand has three historic and beautiful waterfront villages: Russell, Devonport and Akaroa (the latter in the South Island). We were already very familiar with Russell (in the Bay of Islands) but had only briefly visited Devonport the previous year. This season, we hoped to spend more quality time there.
Devnonport is very much like Russell with historic buildings, quaint cottages, big trees, and a beach. Its harborside location is protected from ocean swells and has fairly flat water. Across the channel sit Auckland’s eastern suburbs, and boats sailing by make this a painting-worthy scene. In all, Devonport is a very pleasant place to be. I think it was summed up best in photos we took the previous year, which I’ll recycling here:
Aside from its seaside beauty, the general Devonport area has two dormant volcanoes which are now reserves, terrific places to visit for their city and harbor views. We decided to start this Devonport visit by checking out the volcano that overlooks the town: Mount Victoria.
People on foot enjoy taking the walk up Mount Victoria. People with cars wonder if they, too, should walk up and get some exercise. We certainly considered it before guiltily driving to the upper parking area. Mount Victoria, once an active volcano, is now a tall grassy hill with tree-strewn slopes. The view from up top is certainly nice, and for those who like such things, there’s a disappearing gun, basically a hidden canon meant to surprise invaders, from the 1800s.
Below, some photos from our visit to Mount Victora, including a photo of the disappearing gun. The “mushrooms” are air vents for a below-ground work area. (Click to enlarge and scroll though galleries in this post.)
Next, we headed to the central area of Devonport and re-acquainted ourselves with its beach, pier, and the really lovely Windsor Reserve park with some very big trees. Finally, we wandered up the main street and spotted a nice-looking Thai restaurant, Monsoon, where we enjoyed an early dinner. Below, some photos from our visit to town.
Over the course of our month-long stay in Bayswater, we visited Devonport regularly. Takapuna was our primary town for eateries, but Devonport was a nice alternative for a more relaxed outing and our go-to place for a chocolate fix. Devonport is home to one of our two favorite chocolate shops in all of New Zealand, and it was fun to enjoy regular visits. (Note: Our other favorite is Makana Confections located in Northland and Blenheim.)
And while we can’t claim to have thoroughly scouted out Devonport’s restaurants, we did have a couple of very nice meals. Aside from Monsoon, we went to a British pub called The Patriot which had some good English food and great beer. Another favorite spot was a Mediterranean restaurant called Manuka. Not only was the food terrific, but they had a nice big awning under which to sit and be protected from the sea breezes. We generally avoid outdoor tables, but we comfortably enjoyed an evening meal, sidewalk-cafe style.
One more nifty spot was the Devonport Stone Oven Bakery and Cafe, a local institution very popular for its bread, baked goods and cafe meals. Below, a few photos of these favorite spots in town.
In all, Devonport was a nice find and one of the best reasons to stay in the Bayswater Marina, but having a car was essential to get to and from the area.–Cyndi
We’ve started watching the weather for a couple reasons: getting to Australia next month and maybe getting out for a short, local cruise before that. Tonight, the two models we look at are WAY out of sync. Here there are side by side – from PredictWind…
On the left is PredictWind’s PWG model and on the right is the ECMWF model. Both are usually very good. Here, ECMWF shows a cyclone that passes over the northern tip of New Caledonia and on Saturday, has dropped south off the coast of Australia. PWG shows the low above New Cal for a bit and then it dissipates.
This is both educational and uncharacteristically fun for us to watch. We can observe without the usually stress of having to pick weather for an imminent passage. It’ll be interesting to see what really happens with this low or cyclone. I’ll try to remember to post an update here with the results. -Rich
Update, February 13, 2020 (4 days later)
Below are PWG and ECMWF as they appear now. It looks like ECMWF is the winner, at least so far. The PredictWind models are now showing the cyclone pretty much as ECMWF (and GFS) did four days ago.
Update, February 15, 2020:
Well, it moved just a little faster than ECMWF forecast, but it’s clear that they are the winner. The cyclone remnants are pretty close to where ECMWF said it would be six days ago. Even PWG has come around and today looks almost exactly like ECMWF.
I think that reinforces what we’ve thought: ECMWF is the best the furthest out and for open-ocean conditions. I’ll continue to look at PWG for a second opinion and especially in areas close to land as I think they model land effects better than the other models.
This concludes this test of the emergency weather forecasting system.
Update: February 17, 2020
We’re looking at a (remotely) possible weather window to sail to Oz on Sunday. Again, PWG and ECMWF couldn’t be much more opposite. I’m going to continue this story here over the next few days and we’ll see who’s right. Here’s today’s picture:
PWG on the left shows a low. ECMWF on the right shows a high. Let’s see who’s right.
It seems that ECMWF is winning this one as well. Here’s what it’s showing 3 days later with both models now agreeing on a high pressure system in the Tasman on Sunday.
Forecast now showing both models predicting a high in the Tasman on Sunday.
And here’s the final result… ECMWF wins again. PWG used to be my go-to model but lately, at least in the Tasman, it’s often getting it wrong. I wonder what’s up? -Rich
We couldn’t decide which shot we liked better, so you get both. These were taken handheld with our new Olympus OM-D EM-5 Mk II and a 12-200mm zoom lens. The image stabilizer in this camera is amazing and it should be great for the boat as both the lens and the body are weather resistant. -Rich
My morning began with a surprising realization. I have a little thought exercise I tend to do on special occasions, basically musing on where the ultimate place to spend this day would be. It’s not always the same place, but it’s also pretty much never where we are. Except this year. I thought about where it would be fun to be, and the answer was quick: right here!
This wasn’t because Bayswater Marina was a particularly special place. It was more about the circumstances at the time. Aside from being in an area fairly new to us, we were near an exciting city that we hoped to get to know better, and we had the time to devote to doing just that. I had fun things planned for the night (dinner at the Sky Tower), for the month ahead (outings in the greater Auckland area), for the month after that (cruising the beautiful Hauraki Gulf), followed by a stay in another city we enjoy (Tauranga). After that, we had plans to sail off to the tropics (destination undecided) for the winter.
I guess the magic formula for this particularly contented birthday was being amidst lots of novelty interspersed with things we already knew and liked and things I looked forward to doing in both the near and distant future. That balance of familiarity vs novelty can be a fine line between monotony, excitement and stress, and I hoped to stay balanced on this line for as long as possible. With this lifestyle we don’t have much monotony (although we do go through occasional burnout phases that make things feel monotonous). Usually the undesired feeling is stress, but that comes with the territory. For now, we didn’t have anything stressful on the horizon, and things were going along nicely.
Actually I might have stressed Rich out some with my dinner plan. I’d been wanting to visit Auckland’s Sky Tower and its two observation decks, but like most sky towers, the price was high enough to give us pause. But they had a deal: if a person went there for dinner, both the Observation Deck and the higher Sky Deck were free of charge for a 45-minute time period.
I’d made a plan for us to arrive just before sunset and spend the 45 minutes watching the evening deepen over Auckland, then have dinner at Orbit 360, the tower’s revolving restaurant, while enjoying views of the city lights. Meanwhile I’d assured Rich that the reviews of this restaurant were very good, but he wasn’t convinced. It was my birthday, though, and this dinner experience was the present I wanted. He made the reservation.
While dinner was the big plan for the day, we did make an afternoon trip to Auckland to seek out a very special Asian food court, and one place in particular called Yong’s Hand Pulled Noodles. Thankfully we got there early as the line ended up pretty long. When we got our food we could see the reason for the lines: those noodles and the food were fabulous. One of the dishes we’d had was so spicy it left our mouths numb, but we cooled off with Thai milk tea with bobas from another vendor. Yong’s ended up being one of our favorite New Zealand eateries, and it was fun to have our first visit happen on my birthday.
Later we returned to the downtown area and its SkyCity complex. We started by taking elevators to the Sky Deck, the highest deck. What an incredible view we had as the sun was just setting. We walked around the deck with 360 degree views of the city, watching the lights start to wink on. From there we went down the elevator three floors to the Observation Deck and more fantastic views. I actually preferred the views from the Observation Deck as it was lower and closer to the tops of the buildings, giving us the feeling of flying over them. By the time we went back up a floor to the restaurant, the night had settled in.
The hostess led us to our windowside table. The lights in the restaurant were kept low and the city lights spread out below us made a dazzling display. We ordered a bread and spreads appetizer and some champagne for me, then Rich had the goat cheese souffle and I had the steak, both of which we split. Both meals were fantastic. We had a Valrhona chocolate dish for dessert, and I had more champagne. By the time we finished, the restaurant had made one complete revolution and given us city views in every direction.
Below, a gallery of photos from our Sky Tower visit (click to enlarge and scroll through photos).
And a zoomed-in view of our Bayswater Marina. No, we couldn’t quite pick out our boat in this photo.
Bayswater Marina at dusk.
In all, this made for an incredible evening and even years later, we consider this one of highlights of our time in New Zealand. Rich loved it so much he did his own post about it at the time: Auckland Skytower and Orbit 360 Restaurant. Note for anyone who might want to visit this restaurant: this place gets booked up; so make a reservation ahead of time. –Cyndi
