Andover Street, Merivale



Our house and garden at 4/29 Andover St, Merivale. Small but perfectly formed

Summer in Mona Vale Gardens, a short walk from Andover St. You can just make out the local art group sitting in the shade having lunch

Mike went to the new cricket grounds over Hagley Park to watch the England/Scotland game in the Cricket World Cup

Kapa Haka Festival over Hagley Park

Walking round Methven 28 February 2015

We decide to go away for the w/e and book ourselves a double room in a snow-boarding backpackers place in Methven. The fences around the garden were made of upright snow boards, quite effective really, and it was run by a young sporty guy. The place was pretty empty because of course, it being Summer, we're out of season. Methven has a really good but tiny Japanese restaurant where we eat both nights of our stay. It's next door to an equally tiny cinema where we see the Second Best Marigold Hotel.

Mt Sunday, known by Lord of the Rings fans as Edoras, is the central hill in front of the high mountains. Makes for a pleasant stroll, but to get to this spot we have to drive down a very long gravel road. As we're leaving 2 huge coach loads of tourists arrive doing the Lord of the Rings trip. You have to imagine the elven castle on top of the hill, there's certainly no sign it was ever there, except maybe for a small gold rock painting of a unicorn

Over the swing bridge towards Mt Sunday

Looking up the valley from the top of the hill, the highest mountains are still cloud covered . . .

. . . and looking back the other way down the valley



Our next stop is Lake Heron where we track down this kettle hole. Kettle holes are small depressions left as glacial ice retreated from the area. This one's quite large and is covered in white gentians

 

 



Weather's looking terrific again the next day as we head for Mt Somers. We choose to climb up the Rhyolite Ridge track which turns out to be a pretty steep climb up through bush and scrub to a ridge. Fantastic views all round



 

Standing at the top of the ridge we then have a bit of a scramble further on up eventually meeting the junction with the Mt Somers track

The walk is circular and across the valley we can just make out the return track but doing the whole thing would be too tough on my knee so we accept we'll return the way we came




This gives you an idea of the ridge, you can just make out an orange pole marker

 



Back down at the car park Mike just about manages a bit of river deep enough to swim in after a long hot descent



Hog's Back, 16 December

After climbing a bit we come to the top of the hill, where the path takes us through lots of flowering manuka bushes and eventually out onto a beautiful foot path along the hill side appearing to head up towards the mountains.



Just before we begin to descend we come across this rather lovely fallen tree

Looking through the dead branches across the valley towards the Hog's Back



The path takes us across a wide stretch of tussock grass towards a wooded area

We cross the stream and the path takes us through a series of wooded areas interspersed with alpine meadows, heading upwards from now on

Eventually we get to the foot of the Hog's Back. Very little vegetation just a lot of loose rock as we zig zag upwards

At the top we meet up with a few groups of off roaders. The bald stony earth gives way to coarse grass, bushes and tussock, and we find a warm sheltered spot for our picnic.



Gisborne w/e 4-7 December 2014

We flew up to Napier on an evening flight on 4 December and A&A met us at the airport and took us back home for dinner. The next morning Andy drove us to Gisborne where we'd booked into a hotel by the harbour for two nights. We had a wander round the town, great bookshop with café above it in the centre. Bit of a cold wind blowing the day we arrived but turned out beautiful for the rest of the w/e. Found a great place for breakfast round the corner which did an amazing Hawaiin breakfast booster, a cross between a fruit muesli and a smoothy. Weren't so successful with our dinner on the first evening. All OK but for the oysters which tasted like they'd been through the dish washer. Our luck changed on the second evening when Andy found a Mexican pop-up restaurant which was terrific.

On Saturday we walked along the beach to the old lighthouse

It's a rather odd lighthouse, rusty ironwork and cement, no longer possible to access the spiral staircase

Lots of shags posing above us . . .

. . . and plant-life fossils in the rocks around

Our hotel was close to the marina, behind it is the hill we climbed

Towards the top of the hill, beneath a pohutakawa tree, is a statue of Captain Cook as this is where he where he first set foot on New Zealand soil.

A great view over Gisborne from the top of the hill. Saw loads of tuis feeding on the flax

West Coast long w/e 13-16 November 2014

Friday's a Canterbury Holiday so Mike took the Thursday afternoon off and we set off up to the Lewis Pass on our way to the West Coast. Just past the highest point we stopped at Maruia Springs for the night, a motel run by Japanese with good food and thermal pools down by the river. That evening we were the only people soaking in their fabulous hot pools with steam rising and tuis flying overhead and just a few sandflies around to remind us we weren't in paradise. We took our own muesli and tea with us so we could set off early in the morning.

The best NZ community café ever is here in Reefton, an gold and coal mining town we stopped at on the way to the west coast. The owner drives the school bus, takes people up to the mines, and does heritage tours in fancy dress as well as running the café

The cafe sells aprons and crazy tea cosies as well as great coffee and cakes.



We hit the coast around Westport and turned north going up to the Karamea and the Kahurangi National Park. Before the end of the road (where the Heaphy Track begins) we turned off into the Oparara basin. It's an area of limestone, rivers and wild bush with huge dry caves. All very dark and no people when we were there. Mike loved it and went ahead gleefully: you can just see the trepidation in my face

 

Mike had a head torch with him and was keen to spot the rare cave spiders and wetas that live in these damp, dark, cold places

The Oparara River was quite high as we'd had a lot of rain recently. It's stained orange/brown by the tannin in leaf mould

This is the largest of the two arches, at around 40m it's very impressive

We were able to climb quite far up underneath

 

Mirror Tarn nearby was still and beautiful

Moss and ferns in a hundred shades of green smother every surface

The second arch is much lower but more fun to visit because you're able to climb down a hole into a cave beneath it

Climbing down under the arch. The river runs fast here creating little whirl pools across its surface



You can just see some stalagtites hanging underneath the arch



Another small cave under the arch



On our return to the car the cutest little South Island robin flew up to us, stopped us in our tracks and hopped around our feet for 5 minutes or more. A pretty creamy white breast unlike the UK variety



We had a lot of rain overnight in Karamea and no power in our motel that morning. We drove up to the start of the Heaphy Track, crossed the flooded Kohaihai River and did the first hour or so of the walk up to Scotts Beach







At the start, just over the swing bridge is the Nicau loop track. Good fun walking next to the swollen river and wonderful to be back amongst Nicau palms, supplejack etc

 

 

We walked up to Scotts Beach, as wild as it gets. Nobody else around and recent rain had gouged a huge channel through the sand. Pink granite around here creating lovely yellow sand



Mike looking happy but standing perilously close to the edge of the sand bank beside a very fast flowing river

 

Back at the mouth of the River Kohaihai there's a huge spit of sand by the DOC campsite, weather looking a lot better



After lunch back at the Last Resort in Karamea we drove south towards Punkaiki, stopping to do a short walk up Charming Valley. The walk follows an old train track up to an early coal mining area, so there's a lot of old machinery left lying around



An easy walk as it's pretty flat. There was a lot of loose coal lying around too



 

We checked into the Punakaiki Tavern for the night and the following morning started pretty wet. It's a short drive from Punakaiki to the Pancake Rocks, which cover a large area of the headland and are pretty impressive. razy rough sea pounding away shooting spray up through blow holes



Weather clearing a little so we went down to Trueman's Beach for a last look at the wild Tasman Sea



And from the stormy west coast we travelled south to Greymouth and then took the scenic route inland to Arthur's Pass going past Lake Brunner where we stopped for lunch. Weather improved all along the way so home to a warm sunny Christchurch