“The Point England Walk is approximately 11.25kms long (a four hour walk) and is intended for all ages, consisting of easy strolling pathways with surfaces suitable form normal walking shoes.”

Michelle & Brian discovered the Pt England walk. Reconnaissance was required. So Saturday afternoon was an epic exploration of Auckland City’s eastern suburbs, parks, beaches, waterways, wildlife, culture and commerce.

We kind of missed Glover Park on the way in, but followed the route through Churchill Park, explored the Tahuna Torea wildlife reserve with the sand-spit at the mouth of the Tamaki river. Through Wai-o-Taiki nature reserve, and Pt England reserve where Kilikiti was being played. Into G.I. town centre to purchase icecreams, up Apirana reserve to the ridge and St Helier’s Bay Rd. Then back down through St Helier’s and Glendowie, through Glover Park this time where the English style of cricked was being played. Out to the car which we’d parked on Cliff Rd near Ladies’ Bay.

Burkhard’s page
City Council page (the name of the walk has changed to Point-to-Point Walkway)

Over drinks on Friday the subject of Auckland’s sprawl came up, and it was stated that Auckland is one of the largest cities in size. I questioned that, and have tried to find what the actual facts are. Auckland does sprawl, and needs careful management of future growth. But is is really as large as the London, L.A., New York and Tokyo urban areas?

Urban areas, as opposed to City or Regional local government areas, are fuzzy and hard to measure (how far apart do houses need to be before they are rural). Different countries have different definitions of what an urban area is. Auckland’s urban area as documented in Wikipedia from (citation needed!) Statistics New Zealand is 1,806 km². That is large.

I haven’t been able to find a world wide list of urban areas, but compared to urban areas of the USA, Auckland would be 19^th after San Diego’s urban area of 2,026km².

Some of the large urban areas, around the world:

*I’d really like to add a figure for London’s urban area which I believe is much bigger than the GLA.

Helped Tim reinstall WordPress on fishfinger.co.nz.

Tim introduced me to speedtest.net and showed how even though he gets good performance for local Auckland links his Slingshot connection is reduced to a slow trickle when trying to connect overseas. (Tim has provided the numbers to back this up.)

So, back at home I’ve tried this out with my Orcon connection, but I’m kind of surprised by the results. I have a amazing connection speed of 3.63 Mb/s with Salekhard on the Artic Circle in Russia? Better even than the 3.24 Mb/s to WorldxChange here in Auckland? Connection speeds to San Jose, Johannesburg, and Sydney are pretty good, but the connection to Lisbon is a slacker at 0.76 Mb/s. Can anyone explain what’s going on in Salekhard? What are your speeds like?

I’ve been using my old ADSL router for my connection, but I also have a ADSL2+ router from Orcon which I will try next and then update this blog.

Results:

update: Changing over to the Orcon supplied ADSL2+ router was definitely worthwhile. Much faster for the sites nearby (Auckland, Sydney, San Jose), but sites far away are actually slower (Salekhard, Johannesburg). But thinking about Salekard and J’burg it may have just been the time of day when I tested them (early afternoon NZ time, early morning their time) there wasn’t much other traffic? Connection to Lisbon is still awful.

Finally got my wireless working here too.

I was in at the office where for some reason the airconditioning won’t switch on after hours anymore (prob more cost cutting). The answer: home made aircon, and the melted icewater was cool to drink too.

Another discovery: breakfast at Knuckle Sandwich in the 280 Centre (off Q St and Lorne St) is very good, and eggs benedict is as good as a pie when feeling seedy from having drunk far too much the night before.

Did some CSS in the morning then went on a long walk: Along the waterfront; through the Parnell Rose Gardens; down to St George’s Bay and up past St Stephen’s Chapel; back down through Parnell; up Constitution Hill; past the Fisher Building in Auckland University where I used to work; through Albert Park; and finally back home. Just think how much more interesting this blog post would be if I’d taken my camera. Next time.

This is the route Google Maps thinks I did. It has planned the route only on streets though. (Like it says “Walking directions are in beta.”) It doesn’t understand you can walk through parks; that it is much nicer to walk through the parks.