By Natalie Stewart, Justin Atkinson, 18 October 2024
It was a beautiful sunny day in Wellington, and a grand VUWTC scheme was set in motion. Our plan was to walk all the way from the central train station to Ōwhiro Bay (Vic Uni Rec was running a prize draw for those who visited 5 key bays in a month). In classic VUWTC style we wanted to bag them all in 1 day.
We were perhaps a tad optimistic? It was a great day and we met early, so we had no reason to believe we would not reach Ōwhiro. We crossed many bays: Oriental, Little Karaka, Balaena, Weka, Kio, Evans, Shark, Shelly, Kau, Mahanga, Scorching, Karaka, Worser... Along the way we bumped into Arlen, who happened to be cycling all our bays in reverse! This gave us extra confidence. However, it eventually got late and we still had many hours to go. We collectively decided to call it a day and enjoy the rest of the afternoon at Scorching Bay's awesome cafe and beach.
We returned some time later to complete the journey. Reassembling with a different group but some members the same, we travelled from Seatoun to Ōwhiro. Many more bays were experienced: Breaker (and its infamous beach), Eve, Flax, Reef, Palmer, Tarakena, Lyall, Waitaha (Cove), Princess, Houghton, Island, and finally Ōwhiro. Cool things we found were old WW2 bunkers, several playgrounds, amazing milkshakes from Maranui Cafe in Lyall Bay, confusing rock sculptures, plenty of sand, and a tunnel underneath Wellington Airport. We technically reached all the bays in a day thanks to Arlen, and we had a lot of fun too so it was a big success in our eyes!
