The Pencarrow Heads Lighthouse walk is an easy 14.5km walk.
Most of your walk is on a gravelled road followed by a grass track to the Pencarrow Lighthouse. The walk will take you around 4 hours on a round trip to complete. It’s a coastal walk on farm roads and across farm land to get to Pencarrow Heads Lighthouse. Great views out to the Cook Straight.
Quick Facts about this walk
- Location: East Harbour Regional Park, near Wellingon, North Island NZ
- Distance: 14.5 kms
- Time needed: 4 Hours
- Difficulty: Easy
- Wheelchair Access: No
- Route: Round Trip
- Elevation: 76m
- Wet Feet: No
- Toilets: No
- Dogs: No
- Mobile Coverage: Yes
- Last Updated: Sept 2021
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Summary points about this walk
Points of interest along the walk
Point 1: Pencarrow Heads Carpark
If there is no more room in this car park, drive around the corner and park at the gate, it’s up to you.
There is a map for you to read, it’s to the left of the car park by the wooden fence.
Point 2: Pencarrow Lighthouse Turn Off
The private service road follows the coast all the way around to Lake Kohangaprirpiri. At around 40 minutes we arrived at the old Pencarrow Wharf and just in time to see the Wellington to Picton ferry head in to Wellington wharf. Around the next corner we came across a sign warning us about the dumping of sewage out into our beautiful blue clean Cook Straight, so much for clean green NZ.
After 1 hour and 20 minutes we came to a track running up a hill. Well, after looking around we found the sign to Pencarrow Lighthouse, it was hidden by gorse, acres of the stuff. If only I was so lucky to be the back bone of NZ economy, a “gorse farmer”. I would be so proud to be a NZ farmer. We gave the uphill climb a miss and decided to walk around to Fitzroy Bay seeing it was a fantastic day, this added another 3km to our walk.
Point 3: Lake Kohangapiripiri
We walked around to Fitzroy Bay and past the sewage outlet. Out in the distance we could see the remains of an old building, so we took off for a look see. One hour later we were back at the turnoff, what the building was, we still do not know. Back on the walk again, we came to a gate to Lake Kohangapiripiri, it looks as if we could not walk around the lake so we took off up the track to Pencarrow Lighthouse.
Point 4: Pencarrow Lighthouse
100m before the Pencarrow Lighthouse we past the well maintained grave of Evelyn Woods, she died on the 9 of March 1896 at the very young age of 6 years. As you can see in the photo, the lighthouse was getting a new coat of paint, the scaffolding gave me a chance to climb to the top level of the lighthouse and have a look inside as well as get a great view of Wellington Heads. From the lighthouse you can look back down to the road you walked in on, so you have no excuses if you get lost.
4 Responses
Is there any shade when you reach rhe lughthouse, as temperatures are excessive at present.
Hi Linda, thanks for your question. I’m sorry, there isn’t really much shade when you reach the lighthouse, only the shade of the actual lighthouse itself and that will depend on the time of day as to how much shade it produces. Hope you have a great walk there even in this heat!
Is this walk pram friendly?
It depends on your pram, you would need one of those 3 wheel sturdy kind I think.