CURVESCOUTThursday Ride #13 · 4 February 2027
Auckland · Coromandel Peninsula Loop
A loop from Thames · New Zealand
- 295 km
- 5 h 06 min riding
- 5 stops
- loop
This Thursday: Auckland · Coromandel Peninsula Loop. 295 km as a loop from Thames in New Zealand, about 5 h 06 min in the saddle. In February the southern hemisphere is in its riding season - long days and warm roads.
Keep this if you are comfortable on gravel and want forest and waterfalls on a coastal loop. The 309 Road is a 22 km gravel road over the Coromandel Range from Coromandel town to Whitianga, narrow and twisting, with blind corners. Seven kilometres in, Waiau Falls is visible from the road, and a kilometre further a short walk leads to the most accessible stand of mature kauri on the peninsula. Pass on the 309 if your bike does not suit gravel. Keep it, ride it slowly, and stop for the falls and the kauri.
- Kenji, CurveScout scout
The map loads with the stops and the ride's road.
The ride, stop by stop
1Thames
Thames is the gateway to the Coromandel, and it behaves like one, a handsome, slightly worn gold town that still has a main street of old verandahs and a stack of heritage stories. In the 1860s the strike of gold in the nearby hills brought thousands of diggers, and for a few years this was one of the largest towns in New Zealand. The mines have gone, but the School of Mines building and the mineral museum are reminders, and the long tidal flats on the Firth of Thames in front of the town are a world-class stopover for migrating shorebirds.
For a rider, Thames is the point where you decide what you need before the peninsula swallows you. The town has about seven thousand people, so fuel, groceries, repair shops and cafés are all here, and farther north the supply thins. The climb to Coromandel town runs along State Highway 25, which hugs the western shore of the Firth with the sea only a few metres from your wheels, past bays shaded by pohutukawa trees. The road is narrow and winding, with frequent blind corners, tight turns and the occasional logging truck or camper van, so ease through and use the pull-offs to let faster traffic by. In December the pohutukawa burst into red flowers, and the display is genuinely spectacular.
2Coromandel townkm 124
Coromandel Town is the real thing: a small, unhurried settlement of around fifteen hundred people on the west side of the peninsula, facing the Hauraki Gulf at the head of a quiet harbour. It is the last proper town before the road goes feral in the north, and it earns its place on the Auckland loop as a lunch stop and a point of arrival, since the road in from Thames is one of the great coastal rides in the country.
That road, State Highway 25, is the hero. It clings to the shore of the Firth of Thames for nearly fifty kilometres, with big pōhutukawa trees arching overhead and the tide often only a metre below the verge. In December the trees flower scarlet. It is slow, narrow and bendy enough that the average speed is low, so give it time and watch for campervans coming the other way, wide on the hairpins. After the shore the road climbs and drops over the ridge at the Coromandel Range, which has its own tight corners, then rolls down to the town.
3Whitianga beachkm 183
Mercury Bay is the name on the map, and Whitianga is the town that wraps around it, on the eastern side of the Coromandel Peninsula where the Pacific comes in flat and blue and rather unhurried. Captain Cook anchored here in November 1769 to watch the transit of Mercury, which is how the bay got its name, and Māori ancestors had been using the harbour long before that. The beach in front of the town is a long, gentle curve of pale sand with shallow water, the sort of beach where you can leave your jacket and boots on a bag and actually swim without negotiating surf.
You get here on State Highway 25, which on this peninsula is a road with opinions. From Thames it crawls up the Firth of Thames shore under old pōhutukawa trees, then cuts across the ranges, climbing through bush with tight, damp bends where the surface changes colour with every patch of shade. Gravel on the apexes is a regular feature after rain, and it rains with enthusiasm on the Coromandel.
4Kauaeranga valleykm 276
The Kauaeranga Valley runs up from the edge of Thames into the steep, wooded core of the Coromandel Peninsula, and it tells the story of the region more honestly than the postcard beaches on the other coast. Thames, about six and a half kilometres away, was a gold-rush town in 1867, and when the gold gave out the loggers turned to the great kauri forests. The valley is full of reminders. Dams built of kauri logs were used to hold water and release it in a flood to float timber down to the mill, and the remains of one, the Dancing Camp dam, can still be walked to.
Today the valley is a forest park, with the Department of Conservation visitor centre a short way up the road. The land is rugged, with volcanic ridges, rocky pinnacles and dense bush, and the road runs beside a clear stream through steep walls of green. Beyond the visitor centre the road narrows and the surface gets rougher, ending at trailheads for the Pinnacles, a famous walk to a rocky summit with a hut where trampers stay overnight. The trees are a mix of regenerating kauri, rimu and tree ferns, and the air smells of wet earth and leaf litter.
5Thameskm 295
Thames is the gateway to the Coromandel, and it behaves like one, a handsome, slightly worn gold town that still has a main street of old verandahs and a stack of heritage stories. In the 1860s the strike of gold in the nearby hills brought thousands of diggers, and for a few years this was one of the largest towns in New Zealand. The mines have gone, but the School of Mines building and the mineral museum are reminders, and the long tidal flats on the Firth of Thames in front of the town are a world-class stopover for migrating shorebirds.
For a rider, Thames is the point where you decide what you need before the peninsula swallows you. The town has about seven thousand people, so fuel, groceries, repair shops and cafés are all here, and farther north the supply thins. The climb to Coromandel town runs along State Highway 25, which hugs the western shore of the Firth with the sea only a few metres from your wheels, past bays shaded by pohutukawa trees. The road is narrow and winding, with frequent blind corners, tight turns and the occasional logging truck or camper van, so ease through and use the pull-offs to let faster traffic by. In December the pohutukawa burst into red flowers, and the display is genuinely spectacular.
Before you go
295 km loop, about 5 h 06 min of riding. Check the weather and any road closures before you leave; mountain and coast roads change with the season.