Time: 1 hour and 45 minutes
Distance: 4.8 km
Start: End of Horotane Valley Road
Finish: Same place.
Date: Friday 5th April 2024
The Linda Woods Reserve is a 233 ha block of land in the Port Hills - spanning the Horotane and Avoca Valleys between Rapaki Track and Castle Rock Reserve. Once called Tussock Hill Farm, the land was bought for $1.8 million in 2018 by the Summit Road Society with the help of a couple of generous members. One was current president Bill Woods who donated $600K on condition that the reserve be named after his deceased wife Linda, who was an avid Port Hills hiker. The Summit Road Society hope to restore the reserve to its former dry lowland podocarp forest state, and various organisations and community groups are in the process of planting 95,000 trees. How wonderful!
The reserve has been opened to the public for a couple of years now, but with the proviso that it is still work-in-progress. There are some farm tracks to walk along but no maps yet. Me and my hoa rangatira have walked a couple of haphazard off-piste loops and I was planning that we would revisit one of them today. In the end, that did not eventuate because in the meantime, rather high, unscalable fences have appeared within the reserve - probably to protect the native plantings from farm stock and humans.
We drove to the cul-de-sac at the end of Horotane Valley Road and entered the reserve via the narrow pathway squished between two driveways. We vaulted the turnstile with the possum skins on the fence (they have been there for a couple of years now) and took the farm track, veering uphill alongside the pines - direction west.
The track levelled out, following the contour line around the hill to Duncan Park and the pylons. We went through the gate at the top of the paddock with weird horsey show-jumping paraphenalia in it. 100 eyes watched us go by with great interest. A flock of confident sheep.
The farm track forked and we took the right-hand lower path, down the hill to a gate which nowadays has a "Private Property No Thoroughfare" sign on it. Cows and farm buildings could be seen tantalisingly beyond. This basically thwarted our loop plans and so, sadly, we did not get to experience the native plantings and the pretty Avoca Valley. Nevermind.
Rather than retracing our footsteps, we went off-piste here, following the fencelines - along and up steeply - to where they intersected the high farm track. Perhaps from here we could have continued on up and around to the Avoca Valley - or up and over the rocky outcrops - instead we returned to the pylons and Duncan Park and the weird horsey paraphenalia. 100 eyes watched us go by. We followed the contour back to the Horotane Valley and the car, pondering why some of us (#notyoujane) have become high maintenence chicks as we have aged. Only the finest freshly squeezed orange juice with our voddies thank you very much.
A house nearby was selling fruit and veges at the gate and we bought capsicums and apples. We drove 50 meters down the hill and lingered at the Black Tin Shed buying spinach pestos and fruit loaves.
We got to the Silos Cafe just as the rain was starting. It was cosy, sitting inside eating mushroom frittatas and sammies, slurping flat whites and admiring the bright colours and protrusions of the painter's pallette pot plant flowers a.k.a Anthurium andraeanum, flamingo flower, tailflower, oilcloth flower and laceleaf. No mention of little willies, but fyi Wikipedia did mention that they are rather toxic, with "saponins and crystals of calcium oxalate, in fine needles, able to penetrate the mucous membranes and provoke painful irritations." Jaysus.
