My Perfect Weekend: Miro Camden on nature walks, house watching and cheap wine nights

Miro Camden's perfect weekend centres around quality time with friends. Photo / Supplied

Each weekend we ask a local to describe how they would spend an ideal weekend in the region. This week Emma Bernard talks to Miro Camden, a barista at Article Cafe.

One of my favourite activities, now that I'm out of school and not in that forced environment to see my friends, is to go on a lot of bush walks with my close-knit friends.

So Bushy Park, Westmere Lake, Paloma Gardens. Those are our spots. There are several different tracks at Bushy Park, but the wetlands are my favourite.

We normally just take our dogs, have a little walk around and a good ol' catch-up. That's absolutely one of my favourite things to do.

We really like long car rides and I consume a lot of music, I find at least five new songs every day. So we take turns in the car playing each other new music and judging and rating them as if we're music critiques.

We go house watching and just walk around neighbourhoods and go "yeah, that one's nice" or "mmm, that one's a bit dodge". My friend is a pizza delivery driver so she knows every street in Whanganui and can always take me to new exciting ones.

The Musicians Club is always a way to go. Great environment, great people. I love it to bits. I always go for a yarn with Dancing Dave and have a good boogie with my friends.

I do have a very close-knit friend group, and we like wine nights where we go over to my friend's flat. We buy the cheapest cheese and the cheapest wine then lay it out and pretend we're fancy adults and just yarn and bitch about life.

That's what most of my weekends consist of.

I'm currently setting up my room, which is in the ballroom because my parents aren't using it. I've slowly been borrowing equipment and buying bits to fill the space. A lot of it is bits from Article and Space Monster.

It's coming along and I could get a whole band to play there now. I'm not going to do any big parties but, hopefully, I can get my band and maybe a couple of other bands to have like 10 people over at night and have a little rock around.

One thing that gutted me was Lucky Bar closing. So, yeah, I'd just love to own a venue and be able to create a creative space for the community in the weekends. I really hope this little space I'm making at home could be the training wheels.

Otherwise, the Mean Owls play on Friday nights and they always put on the best shows in Whanganui. Probably the whole Manawatū region, actually.

Normally I work at Article, and that's just a party in itself. I love Article, and I love working here. Genuinely the best environment.