This is the New Zealand girls’ getaway where you do the walking and everything else is sorted. Pahi Coastal Walk is three days and two nights of self-guided walking across a family sheep and beef station at the top of the Coromandel Peninsula, with private coastal trails, secluded beaches, home-cooked dinners and time to properly catch up while someone else takes care of the logistics. Here, founder Cath Ward shares how she found an unexpected second act on this remote farm: opening the gates to walkers and building a business that brought new purpose, friendships and work for local women.
By Cath Ward
I told my husband Zander I’d stay on Pahi Station until our first child was five.
That child is now an adult. Twenty-five years after I arrived, I’m still here. I’ve stopped making deadlines.
Home is Port Jackson, at the northern tip of the Coromandel Peninsula, almost four hours’ drive from Auckland on New Zealand’s North Island. It’s a place of rolling green hills, empty beaches and sea views that stop you mid-sentence, mid-chore, mid-anything.
It’s also a very long way from a supermarket, a school, or a spontaneous coffee with a friend.
I’d imagined a corporate career. Instead, I married a farmer, raised three kids at the end of a gravel road and, eventually, built a walking business on the land around us.
That last part changed everything about how I feel living here.
London wasn’t meant to lead to a remote farm
I grew up on a farm near Whangārei, in Northland, New Zealand’s subtropical top end. I loved my childhood. I also couldn’t wait to see what else was out there.
Like plenty of young New Zealanders, I headed for London. That’s where a mutual friend introduced me to Zander, a farmer’s son from the Coromandel. I had no idea that introduction came with a farm attached.
We travelled together, then came home in 2001 to help his father, Philip, on Pahi Station. We married in 2003 and took over running the farm in 2007.
Zander’s family has deep roots here. His grandfather and two great-uncles bought the original Pahi block in 1931. Today we run sheep and beef across 5,500 acres, including leased land next door. That might sound modest to anyone from Queensland cattle country. Fold it over steep coastal hills, and it’s plenty.
When your partner’s future is tied to a farm, the “where should we live?” conversation goes a little differently to other couples’.
You can’t move the farm. So here we are.
A beautiful place can still be a lonely one
By 2007 we had three children: Kate, Harrison and Cameron.
There was a lot to love about raising them here. They roamed the hills, invented games on the beaches and pitched in on the farm. They learned to be resourceful and to think for themselves, because out here you have to.
But everyday family life took serious logistics. Colville, our nearest village, is 45 minutes away on a winding coastal road. The supermarket in Thames is more than two hours each way, so you learn to write a very thorough shopping list.
For a while we rented a house in Colville so the children could go to school. Then I homeschooled the kids for four years, which is its own kind of adventure. When they went off to boarding school in Hamilton, we bought a house there so we could see them most weekends.
We used to joke that we were the only family in New Zealand with a holiday house in Hamilton. For Australian readers: Hamilton is a perfectly nice inland city in dairy country, about four hours’ drive from us. Having a holiday house there is a bit like having a weekender in Toowoomba or Wagga Wagga rather than Noosa. Nobody goes there for the summer holidays.
I loved my family and our life together. But I missed my friends. I missed popping out to see someone without it becoming an expedition. Winters, especially, could be very quiet.
The scenery was extraordinary. That didn’t mean living here was always easy.
Looking at familiar land with fresh eyes
As the kids grew more independent, I started wondering what came next for me.
I’d run a couple of holiday rentals on the farm and flirted with the idea of glamping. But I kept coming back to the coastline.
We had hills, native bush, hidden bays and views across to Aotea Great Barrier Island, and almost nobody outside our family and friends ever saw them. Other private farm walks had proved there were people keen for exactly this kind of holiday.
So why not share ours?
Zander had fair questions about how a stream of walkers would fit around a working farm. Plenty of other people had opinions, too. For once in my life, I didn’t wait for everyone to agree.
I did it backwards. I started marketing the walk and taking bookings before the tracks and accommodation were finished. Nothing focuses the mind quite like paying guests with a start date!
Then we had to make it real. We worked on the trails and turned two old farmhouses into somewhere walkers would want to spend the night: Pahi Retreat and the Shearers’ Quarters.
Opening the gates meant inviting strangers into a landscape we knew by heart, and learning to see it through their eyes. It turns out I’d stopped noticing just how good our own views were.
The walk is only part of it
Pahi Coastal Walk is a three-day, two-night, self-guided walk across our working station.
The trails wind through farmland and native bush, along ridgelines and down to beaches you’ll likely have to yourself. Much of this coastline can only be reached through private land, so for most people this is the only way in.
We cap each departure at 12 guests. Your overnight bag travels ahead, so you carry nothing more than a daypack.
Some guests want to tick off every kilometre. Others take the shorter routes and leave time for a swim or a long, lazy afternoon. On the final day you can swap your boots for an e-bike and cruise the coast road back to Colville. It’s a guest favourite, and if you’re feeling weary, your legs will thank you.
Then there’s the food. We take care of the meals, provisions and homemade baking, and we pride ourselves on making sure no one goes hungry.
Guests make breakfast and pack their lunch from the supplies provided, then heat or barbecue their prepared dinners whenever they’re ready. The menu changes, but grass-fed New Zealand lamb, fresh salads and decadent desserts give you a taste of what’s in store. Dietary requirements are catered for, too.
Then there’s the snack situation. The cinnamon brioche scrolls are a crowd favourite, alongside jars of freshly baked yo-yo biscuits, iconic Kiwi Jet Planes and Whittaker’s chocolate.
Nobody has to plan a menu or do a supermarket run. Trust me, that’s a gift out here. Bring your favourite drinks, and we’ll have them chilled and waiting when you return from the day’s walk.
Groups of women have become a big part of Pahi. They round up their walking friends, sisters or old schoolmates and make a few days of it. We also welcome couples, groups of blokes and solo walkers.
There’s time to talk properly here. You can walk beside someone for hours, share a meal, and pick the conversation back up over breakfast.
My favourite part of the day is the evening check-in on the second night. Tess, my right-hand woman, or I pop by the accommodation to hear how everyone’s day went. Those conversations have become one of the real joys of my working week.
Finding purpose, and making work for other women
The business has brought a lot more people into my life. It has also created jobs for other women in a community where jobs are hard to come by.
I started with three local women, and the team has grown from there to seven rural women. Together they cook, bake, clean, reset the accommodation and handle all the small details that make guests feel looked after.
There isn’t much paid work nearby, and there’s no local childcare. Being able to offer jobs that fit around rural family life matters more to me than almost anything else the walk has done.
The benefits spill well beyond our boundary fence. Guests stay in Colville and Coromandel Town, spend in the cafés and shops, and travel with our shuttle and e-bike partners, Hike & Bike Coromandel.
In 2024, Pahi Coastal Walk won the Supreme Award at the NZI Rural Women New Zealand Business Awards. Not bad for an idea that started as “what if we let people walk our farm?”
For me, it recognised something simple: sharing a place we already loved, and building something worthwhile around it.
Still here, with something new to share
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing, though. In 2023, Cyclone Gabrielle cut off access to the property and forced us to cancel bookings. Running a walking business alongside a working farm means weather, repairs and the unexpected are all part of the job.
But opening the gates gave me a sense of purpose I never saw coming.
I still live at the end of that gravel road. The supermarket hasn’t moved any closer. But now my days include welcoming people who have travelled a long way to experience the land around us.
I once told Zander I’d stay until our first child was five.
Twenty-five years later, I’m still here. And finally, I have something of my own to share.
Cath Ward is the founder and host of Pahi Coastal Walk, which she runs with her husband Zander on their family’s working sheep and beef station at the top of New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula. Images: Pahi Coastal Walk.
More Information About Pahi Coastal Walk
Where: Port Jackson, at the northern tip of New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula.
The experience: Three days and two nights of self-guided walking across a working coastal farm, with a maximum of 12 guests per departure. Routes and distances vary, and there’s an optional e-bike ride on the final day.
What’s included: Two nights’ accommodation, dinners and breakfasts, Day Two lunch provisions, homemade baking and snacks, luggage transfers, and return shuttles from Colville. Bring a packed lunch for Day One and your own duvet or sleeping bag. Full linen and Day One lunch are available with the optional Pahi Premium Package. E-bike hire is charged separately.
When: The walking season runs from spring to autumn (roughly late September to early May).
Price: NZ$895 per adult for the 2026–27 season, about A$720 at November 2026 exchange rates. Optional extras cost more.
Getting there from Australia: Fly into Auckland from Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane, with multiple flights daily and flight times of around three to four hours. From there, it’s approximately a three-hour drive to Colville via Thames, where Pahi’s shuttle takes over. Explore also operates a seasonal ferry from Auckland to the Coromandel, with onward transport to arrange. Or if you’re feeling fancy, there’s plenty of space to land a helicopter.
Planning your visit: Stay in Coromandel Town or Colville the night before your walk. Travel to Colville and pre-walk accommodation are extra.
Website: pahicoastalwalk.co.nz
Enquiries: hello@pahicoastalwalk.co.nz | +64 21 816 228
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