Blenheim
Easter weekend saw us touring around the Marlborough countryside. Harry went to the airshow and I'll let him write another blog about that (all I need to say is that the view from the top of the Wither Farm Hills was somewhat full of aircraft and smoke trails and the walk was slightly less peaceful than it might have been on another weekend!!). It is a perfect place for biking, but I decided I wasn't quite ready yet to get back on, so we might be heading back this way sometime for a biking weekend.
We visited Lake Grassmere and the salt hills - its one of those places you always pass on the way to Christchurch, but it is worth a stop, especially when the sky is a bright blue.
We had lunch at a winery for lunch, saw the little cob cottage, the Omaka Museum and went to see Hyde Park on Hudson (Roosevelt movie) as well as wandered around some marshland.
The highlight for me was wandering up to Mt Vernon on the day of the airshow. I climbed 422 metres which is just slightly less than Mt Kau Kau. Great weather and my first good walk since my op. 4.5 hours - and with some left over energy to go and find an icecream at the end. It is very brown down here - Wellington might be in drought, but it is greener than further south.
Recently we went for our combined Christmas and Birthday treats. We had a weekend around Taumaranui. Some of you might wonder why - in fact if we were in the UK there would be facial expressions a bit like when we said we were going to Stevenage or Hull. Certainly the town itself didn't offer much on Saturday night, two restaurants were open - and there is no pub. Not that we would have gone if there had been, we just noticed that remarkable absence (the motel owner said there is a RSA and Cossie club, and the pub closed down after a few exciting events!!). The main street is alcohol free at night, so I guess that doesn't encourage a pub to be open.
Anyway, we drove up late Friday afternoon to Wanganui and stayed at the Kingsgate. We had been given a wonderful wedding present of bed and breakfast in the hotel. Far from romantic I was curled up in one of the double beds by 9.00 and slept without waking until 7.30 the next morning. Harry watched the rugby and fell asleep in the other bed!!
We drove up through Stratford after a very healthy and big (!!) breakfast and began our drive through the forgotten highway. The road was wider than expected and we drove along stopping at lots of the sights - the old brick kiln, the school in the once flourishing town, the Bridge to Somewhere (long way on unsealed road where we met cyclists one of which knew Harry), had a walk through farm land to the Damper Falls and then stopped at the Whongomomana Hotel - chips and coffee were a must I had said a few days ago. We stopped to see some views (Mt Taranaki to the west and Mt Ruapehu, Tongariro and Nguarahoe to the east), saw our little golf carts riding along their tracks and then drove on to Taumaranui.
One of the things that surprised us was the amount of land that had been cleared for farmland. We had assumed that we would be driving through fairly thick bush, but in most cases that wasn't the case.
The next day we took our little golf cart on rail tracks trip (petrol powered golf carts adapted for railway line use, with steering immobilised and maximum speed 10 km an hour). It was a lot of fun, and those organising the soft adventure that had only been established in October 2012 had thought it all out. Loos had been built along the way, morning and afternoon teas as well as lunch were provided at old stations under tarpaulins. We drove along looking forward to each stop, waving to cows and sheep, and occasionally slowing down to let an animal off the track. We were told that on average those doing this trip was around 70 ish!!
