A New Day in New Plymouth

It looks like a glorious day ahead when we open the curtains to see...

 Anyone recognise the face on the mountain?

Having enjoyed our cycling in Napier it seemed only natural to sample the cycle pathway offered on the coast at New Plymouth. 

We head into town straight after breakfast making for the cycle hire at Strandon. Here the bikes are hired by the hour rather than day/half day as in Napier. Selecting suitable steeds we settle Eric in the bike carrier

Then take the advice of the hirer to head in the quieter direction towards the Te Rewa Rewa bridge. 

Wheee - this makes a good slide

There's that mountain again

The route was clearly the best option as we discovered later. 

A duck in the river, or more accurately on a rock in the river. A passer-by informed us it was a Whio, or Blue Duck. Whio not so sure as wrong sort of habitat (they like rushing rivers, which this one hardly is).  

Returning the cycles after an hour we decide that that's long enough, as the path is a lot busier than we would wish- it is a Sunny Saturday after all. 

We walk along the Coastal Walkway in the opposite direction toward the town, and find it to be both busy and distinctly undulating. Not "Alp D'Huez" you understand but it would have been hard work on the heavy hire bikes with only 3 gears. 

Along the way we see lots more of these butterflies.

Past the town and the wind sculpture and towards the port.

These boulders along the edge of the walkway make a great vantage point for Eric.

We make it to the port end of the walkway and discover a vegetarian specialist cafe. Seriously delicious cake and coffees ensue. 

The endpoint for the more adventurous is Paritutu Rock, a volcanic plug you can climb up.

We give this a miss - too full of cake + probably wouldn't make it the 6.5 km back to the car after climbing that!  Excuses, excuses.

After a good rest we make the return walk to the iSite tourist office to locate Pukekura park. It's a council managed garden close the the town centre but we need know exactly where. 

That mountain keeps cropping up so we take another photo. 

A sign at the start of this end of the walkway is handily labelled 'predicament' and as with all those choices it's a wonder there aren't hundreds of people around dithering about where to go. You may see it also mentions that mountain. They have obviously noticed it too.  

A new friend

Eventually we are headed for that furthest headland (after the park). It looks further in the picture than it actually is, we hope.

As we walk through the main town centre we spot some interesting art work. Another one of those 

Connecting Rings wind sculptures, as first seen on the marina in Auckland, only made out of spoked rings this time.

Eric has spotted something interesting across the road.

Obviously an Elephant 

Obviously something else but what??

At the entrance to the park there is a very smart looking cricket pitch  

Those stands look rather unusual

A closer look reveals that they are

Steeply banked earth terraces. Looks like it would be a very comfortable place to watch a game. 

Then we find the main lake. 

With a fountain

And a Poet's Bridge - there's that mountain in the background again

And a waterfall

The Pohutakawa are just starting to come out now we are nearly on our way home

At the bandstand in front of the lake there's a wedding. We seem to be colliding with these on a regular basis. 

Then the hot weather demands we have an ice cream  Feijoa and Pear sorbet is tasty if a little strong. 

We now need to have a bit of a relax before heading for the restaurant. 

We get back to the B&B and are greeted by the host demanding we have another Devonshire cream tea. We may not need a meal tonight but we have booked the table. 

After that we have a wander around the garden then head in to town for 7:30. 

The restaurant not only served excellent food, but also had a view over the wind sculpture and the sea. It was a bit too chilly to sit outside where we'd originally booked a table though!

Moving on tomorrow, so packing before bed.