Pohangia Reserve

It was goodbye to Ashhurst and hello to Pohangia Reserve on Thursday, just a short 16km trip away.  We were staying here for our Combined caravan club rally, and decided to arrive a day early, just because we could.  Our club Heretaunga CC is hosting the weekend, and members of both the Wellington and Wairarapa clubs were cordially invited.  Pohangia Reserve is the former local school, and is now managed as a community reserve, playground, swimming pool, and picnic area.  It is certainly a great asset to this small community.

Robin needed to do a little pruning on the large trees in the driveway, as some of the branches were hanging so low they would be scratching and scraping the paintwork as the vans and motorhomes drove in.   Planning ahead, he had already packed a pair of loppers and a small saw, to attend to his tree pruning duties.  With our orange “Heretaunga” club sign attached to the gate to show the guests where to enter, we then sat back in the sunshine to await the early arrivals.

The entrance to Pohangia Reserve

Eventually five vans turned up in the afternoon and we enjoyed 4zees and catching up with everyone gathered under Geoff and Eileen’s awning.

 

Out first 4zees of the weekend

The temperatures dropped overnight and we awoke to mist hanging low over the valley.  Such a pretty sight.

Early morning mist

The sun soon came out and burnt the mist away, and we watched as Noel, camping next to us, fired up his Weber BBQ and cooked up bacon and eggs for breakfast.  It certainly smelt good!

Bacon and egg breakfast for Lynne and Noel

Our club has hired the school house and we walked up the road to collect the key left in the letterbox, as instructed.

Is the key there?

On the way back Robin got chatting to a truck driver who was carefully loading two dump trucks on his trailer.  Seems that there was some drain excavation going on up the hill.  

Two yellow dump trucks on top of a Higgins truck and trailer unit

After lunch we took a drive back through the Pohangia valley to check out the camping areas at Totara Reserve.

There were two camping areas available, we drove through the older, smaller camping area first.  Power sites, ablution block, everything seems good here. 

The original camping sites

And a little further down the road,  the much larger camping area with a multitude of power boxes and modern ablution facilities.  This would be a great place to have a caravan club rally, and very reasonable at $20 per night on power.

Much larger camping area

We also checked out the Raumai Reserve down by the river.  This was very popular with plenty of visitors, and several people taking advantage of the great weather with a dip in the river.  Brr.. bet the flowing water was rather chilly.

Down by the river

And what’s this we see?  Not a “host of golden daffodils”,as William Wordsworth wrote,  but  paddock full of tall nodding sunflowers.

Golden sunflowers

Hay making is in full swing and we saw plenty of hay “rolls” dotted around the paddocks.  But this was a little different – hay stacks packed high like a tower.  Then we noticed more - it must be the way the farmers do things around here.

Hay stack in Pohangia Valley

Arriving back in our camp site we chatted to all the new campers who had arrived during our tiki tour around the area.  It’s going to be a good weekend with 15 vans here at the reserve.