Walk 06 - Hammond Park, Hamilton

It's such a nice feeling when all your plans fall in to place as they're meant to, as they did yesterday. Drop Mum off in Hamilton, dash to Hammond Park for one of the quicker walks in the book, dash back to pick up Mum and make it back home to Auckland with enough time to watch NZ beat Australia in the cricket. Check, check and check!!

Hammond Park is a bit of a tease. Described as a little gem that not many locals know about, you have to drive past Hamilton Gardens in all it's well clipped glory and down some twisty little suburban side streets to find it. As you wonder the path you can't help feel that the locals do know about it...they're just all at the park next door with it's shiny kiosks and public facilities.

Not that the trail isn't nice. It's short (40mins), pretty with it's view of the river and easy. It was just a little underwhelming.

The walk is mostly over a well designed boardwalk that weaves its way through the trees and along the river, which you don't get to see very often (because of the afore mentioned trees) but you know it's there and that knowledge alone is quite nice. There are a couple of lookout points along the way where I managed to spot the Waitomo Caves tourist boat meandering past.

 

 

The boardwalk comes to an abrupt end and you find yourself in a small field at the back of some industrial buildings which was slightly unnerving for this solo-adventurer so I decided to double back along the trail rather than finish the loop along the streets as the book had suggested. Safety first kids!

There is a sweet little bench that you pass before you reach the car-park but it's view is just a corner of the river and a wall of trees. Perhaps if it overlooked the park next door, it wouldn't have looked so unused.

 

So for a quick walk it did the job, but I don't know that you'd want to go too far out of your way for it.