AMBURY CAMPGROUND – AMBURY REGIONAL PARK
A basic flat campground. There are ten hardstands available on a first-come first-served basis.
There are toilets and drinking water nearby.
In dry weather campervans or motorhomes can park anywhere in the campground.
When the Auckland City Council describes a campground like this, you can see why it hasn’t been anywhere of the top of my “campgrounds I must visit” list ..
However, when Master 10 told me he wanted to go camping (which if you don’t know this kid, is AMAZING) and the only place I could find with space available was Ambury Campground I wasn’t about to say to him “you know what – nah … ”
So I sucked up my disappointment that we couldn’t go somewhere “cool” and made the booking.
Well, you know how they say you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover? Well, you also should NEVER judge a book (or in this case campground) by it’s blurb – because Ambury is actually one cool little place!
Back it the day when I decided I wanted to be a multi-sport athlete, I had actually had some bike lessons out at Ambury, so I vaguely knew there was a farm that you could wander around. I thought I’d probably missed the boat by about six years for that activity to be fun, but both of my kids loved wandering around and petting all of the animals.
There were also a number of walks that you could do varying in length. We all did the Family Farm Walk and then after dinner while the boys played cricket with some people they met “next door” Isabelle and I walked the foreshore section of the aptly named Foreshore Walk.
The views are really quite stunning and there were information panels dotted along the way to explain the history of the area, we even found out (quite by chance) that Ambury Park is a part of the Kiwi Guardians program and because we had located the Guardian Post and found the special code word, Isabelle was able to earn a Kiwi Guardian medal.
How cool is that! Incidentally there are a tonne of other ways to earn these cute little medals and in time, we hope to earn a few more.
So, all in all there are way more positives than negatives about this campground. It’s UBER close to civilization, but you feel like you are in the middle of nowhere. The campground has adequate toilet (non flushing) facilities but it’s only a short walk to the public facilities which include hot showers! Hot showers!
The campground itself has bbq facilities and the shelter planting is mature, so it actually shelters you (go figure) and I liked the way they have little bays that you can tuck yourself into. The kids liked the animals (obviously) ad that the trees were mature enough to climb. When Elias wasn’t playing cricket with his new found friend, they were climbing a tree, so I owe a humble apology to Ambury, because you are indeed one cool little place!
Till next time
