Camping Diaries – Whangateau Holiday Park – Leigh

We have camped at the Whangateau Holiday Park twice.  The first time was with our tent, which was a little bit challenging.  The campsites are on the small size especially with a 7m x 7m tent like ours and during the peak season. We managed to squeeze in but was pretty close to our neighbours.  In general it isn’t a massively big holiday park but I think it was just perfect for the size that it is so you would need to book early if you are planning on staying here.  The cost is also pretty reasonable. We loved this park, it’s up north and only about an hour drive from central Auckland. The second time we stayed here, we booked an onsite caravan.  Because we only stayed for two nights there was no point putting up the tent, and we went just before the Easter school holidays and pretty much had the entire park for our group.  The caravan was on the waters edge with amazing views.

The bay that the park is on is just beautiful, when the tide is in, it is perfect for the kids to swim in with clear waters.  When the tide is out, there is a little island in the middle that you can walk over with the kids and explore.  Our group used the opportunity to go geocaching and managed to find one hidden on the island!  The kids could have spent all day playing in the bay it was so safe.  The holiday park has a great playground too, the first time we stayed they didn’t have any shade sails but the second time we went, they had some installed so that was great.  The only thing I did notice was that there seems to be a lot of wasps/bees near the trampoline area.  The showers do cost 50c to use and are really clean, I love the family showers and mothers rooms that they have for younger kids, makes life so much easier.  The kitchens are well equipped and all clean, the worst thing is having dirty camp kitchens!

There are so many things to do in the surrounding areas. You have Warkworth just a short drive away if you need to stock up on food, or you could head down to the Matakana markets in the weekend. We went to the Goat Island Marine Reserve for the day just exploring and decided to do the glass bottom boat tour of the marine reserve which the kids loved. If you are looking to somewhere really cool to eat at, you could try  the Leigh Sawmill Cafe.  Great food and great grounds for the kids to run around.

On another day we drove out and visited the Matakana Country Park which is great.  So many things for the kids to see and do.  Train rides, farm animals, great playground and off course they had a pretty good cafe there too. Just stay away from the rooster!  I have a little phobia for anything with wings especially birds and this rooster actually chased after me like at full speed to!!!  Well I freaking ran like the wind, probably could have beaten Usain Bolt!

The funny thing I do remember with this trip was we went to bed and my husband slept with Chloe who was still a baby and I had Kiara with me and I could hear the loudest snoring ever and thought great no sleep for me, so I sent him a text as he was at the other end of the tent to tell him to stop snoring, and was like, “no I’m not the one doing that!”  Omg! so I went to the toilet and about 4 tents down was a single person tent and the guy was so tall that he was zipped in but his feet stuck out of the tent and he was going for gold with his snoring.  So it was ear plugs for me!

It is a fantastic holiday park and wont mind going back again! At the end of each camping trip we make notes on what we used a lot and things which we needed that we didn’t have.  This trip taught us that we needed a gazebo, especially when putting up the tent in the middle of the day and the sun was pretty hot.  It would have been nice to have some shade to take a 5 minute break.  Lesson learnt.

We have lots of good memories from our stay at Whangateau Holiday Park.

Ronell x