I loaded up my car before work, so that I could get a quick get away at the end of the day. I met Kei and Steven at a car park on the Hutt side of the Haywards Hill road. We strapped on the kayaks and transferred all of their gear into my vehicle and started our journey to a cottage just north of Mangaweka.

Apart from the usual snarl up at Pukerua bay, the journey was traffic jam free. We did however get stuck at both railway crossing just south of Mangaweka, which for the infrequency of rail traffic, is just bad luck.

The directions we were given were ideal for someone arriving during day light hours, but we struggled, and ended up driving 5 km past the turn off, even though Alan had spent time putting up signs, and painting logs pointing in the direction of the cottage. We eventually arrived at the cottage. Kei had already decided to stay at the cottage, but Steven and I had planned on staying at the Mangaweka camp ground, but when we arrived at the cottage it did look very inviting, so we decided to stay.

On Saturday morning we were up at the crack of dawn, well, 7.30. It was an awesome day, but a pretty chilly night, so someone had lit the wood burner in the Cottage. We had breakfast, loaded up the vehicles and met the others at the  camp ground before sorting out the shuttles. The first paddle of the day, was from the camp ground down to the Mangarere road get out. A fairly short, grade 2, 1 hour paddle. I think the paddle was fairly incident free. After collecting the vehicles we drove back to the cottage. Alan was taking some time to arrive back, but eventually turned up with 2 new Bliss Stick boats for the club, a mini Mystic and a full size Mystic.

After lunch, we arranged the shuttles for the afternoon paddle. This time from Toe Toe Road down to the camp ground. A longer run than this morning, but with more features. It turned out to be a really long run, we had a few swims, and we were really starting to get hungry and tired. We eventually arrived back at the cottage around 6ish. We had our dinner, and then spent the evening chilling out and looking at some of Alan's old photos from paddles in days gone by.

We woke on Sunday morning to another gorgeous day. The plan today was to paddle the Kawhatau river which leads into the Rangitikei. The get out was going to be the camp ground, and we arranged shuttles. When we arrived at the Potaka Road bridge over the Kawhatau river, we stood and looked for a bit at the lack of water, but Alan was keen and had already started unloading the vehicles.

Once we were on the water, it wasn't as bad as we first thought. The Kawhatau had plenty to offer, with heaps of rapids, narrow gorges and plenty of places for newbie kayaks to come a cropper. Some of us were a bit hesitant about the prospect of paddling the known grade 3 rapid on the river, but it was actually a pretty fun rapid with plenty of large rocks creating eddies to sneak into, and an eddy on the right hand side at the bottom of the rapid to avoid slamming into the wall. We eventually came out onto the Rangitikei and paddled the last few kilometers to the camp ground, 6 of us stopping off at a large play wave for 10 minutes. All in all, we had paddled about 18.5km today. We picked up the vehicles at the get in and drove back to the cottage for some lunch/dinner as it was now 3.30pm and we had been on the river for just over 4 hours.

It was a really enjoyable day, a really awesome weekend, and a big thanks must go to Alan for organising the cottage.

Below is a short video made up from some footage I took with my Olympus.

Below is a video clip of me on a play wave on the Rangitikei, just above the Mangaweka campground.

To see more photos from the weekend, visit
http://photos.pominnz.com/gallery/7612188_zfagp