Third hill

[landingtree]

Today I made for the hill which hid the previous two from each other. I wasn't at first sure you could go there, tacking up through unfamiliar streets, and seeing locked gates and barbed wire fences around what seemed to be the summit. It was also so wet and cloudy I thought there'd only be a view of cloud. But the big locked gate had a little open access for pedestrians beside it, with dog-walking signs, and the cloud parted, so I got to look back down over Lyall Bay from a new angle. I also wandered around some ruined concrete structures with ghosts graffitied on them, heavy doors lying off their hinges in puddles. And then I accidentally walked a way which took me back down to the memorial from yesterday, so it was again a longer walk than planned.

Comments

[leaflemming]

I know exactly where this is, but I couldn't easily have told you how to get there. I only discovered it this year -- it's very rideable except for one brief carry. That whole section of Wellington is so strange. As far as I can gather it was designed almost overtly as a place to put poor people where they wouldn't get in anyone else's way, or complain if the road access was terrible and half the buildable land in the area was used for a golf course. The golf course is now locked in a death match with the airport for that same land, because obviously expanding the airport makes more sense than creating new housing in a city with a bad-even-for-this-country housing crisis.

And yet above it all one feels very above it all. Because there's this glorious wild stretch of half-ruined road with some of the best views in the city.