beach biking

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the sleep over went ok thanks for asking.  the girls even slept in a bit

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i went to church on my own (the party people stayed at home to watch a movie) then after they left we had our lunch in the garden.  not bad for mid-January (equivalent northern hemisphere date)

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so we thought we should go out to make the best of the day

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so we loaded the bikes in the car and headed up the coast to Orewa which is a nice beach

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with some posh houses including this one with a fancy post box

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the girls had a nice time zooming about on the flat beach

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and we walked as the girls cycled from one end of the beach to the other (total of 5.5km according to the gps logs)

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there was only one brave soul in the sea but mostly there were a good number of dog walkers and dog-less walkers.

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the reason we chose Orewa was because we’d heard there was a fabulous puzzle shop there. and there was.

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it was more like a play scheme really as people were encouraged to sit at a table in the middle of the shop and play with the various puzzles and games (a bit like a games workshop shop if you’ve ever experienced one of them).  the man in the picture above is the rather mad proprietor

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we were in there for about an hour whilst esther chose what she wanted to buy with some of her birthday money

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somewhere along the day i also popped next door to look at our neighbour’s house which has been for sale since january.  they were having their weekly open house so i took the opportunity to talk to the estate agent about leaky homes and house prices in case we ever decided to buy the place we’re in at the moment.

after 2 weeks of holiday it’s back to school for everyone tomorrow so there’s been lots of sorting and things this evening.