Well fancy that!

I parked beside the Eldson Youth Camp and was about to head off along the usual familiar track, when I realised there was another track off to the right.  This had previously been overgrown and messed up due to flooding, and until today I wasn't even sure there it was meant to be passable.  But apparently the Porirua City Council have done some work on it, and now there is a clear path.  This path skirts along the edge of the reserve and comes out at the Aparangi Cres entrance - an entrance of which I was previously unaware.  After that, it's not so much a track as an old firebreak which wanders along a short way and then goes pretty much straight up the side of the ridge, at what feels like a nearly vertical angle (in reality probably about 30 degrees).  This firebreak-track also shows signs of recent work, some of the gorse having been hacked back.  Unfortunately there are new gorse seedlings appearing already so it's a never-ending job for them. I bravely struggled all the way to the top of the ridge and was rewarded with quite a good view of the Porirua harbour and surroundings.  Being such dull weather though, the photos didn't come out very well.  This one was taken on the way down, perhaps you can get a hint of how steep it is from the photo.  The big white rectangular building is the former Mitsubushi vehicle assembly plant known as Todd Park, named after either Todd Motors or the Todd family, I'm not sure which.  When I was shown around the facility in the late 1980s I was told it was (or had been) the largest factory floor in the southern hemisphere.  Sadly, it became less and less economically viable to assemble cars or trucks in New Zealand, Mitsubishi Motors started importing complete vehicles, and eventually the plant closed in about 1998.