Despite some light rain showers during the night we had a good night's sleep in our little tent. After a leisurely morning and then lunch, we ventured north up the beautiful costal road towards Coromandel to go to Castle Rock for a hike to the top. One kilometer from our destination - according to the navigation Siri - we encountered a closed gate across the gravel road so parked the car and started walking, and kept walking as there was no trailhead or anything. After a kilometer and a bit, I finally managed to download the AllTrails (trail app) Castle Rock trail and directions and clearly we were walking in the wrong direction so we turned around and walked back. The trailhead was within a kilometer from where we were parked but up a nearby side road. To be fair to Siri, the trailhead was not marked at all as the trail is not a sanctioned trail, but the AllTrails app was very helpful finding and negotiating the trail. The trail lead through pretty dense and fairly wet vegetation and was not always well marked. Near the top some scrambling was required - not my favourite part - but once at the top the views were very rewarding. You can see both sides of the peninsula and luckily the clouds were cooperative and allowed us to enjoy the views.
After Castle Rock we visited a nearby waterfall and walked through an also nearby fabulous grove of kauri. We then decided to continue on the (still gravel) road to the east side of the peninsula where the road became a paved road again and closed the loop back to the campground by driving south and then west and north back to Thames. The weather was fabulous and so was the late afternoon and early evening light.
Back at the campground we had supper and worked on the blog before going to bed.
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