friday

jane and i are back from out trip up to northland. sorry about the quality of the photos – they are straight out of my phone.

the girls had a good time home alone by the sounds of things.

they both got their exams results on tuesday and both did well.

esther has now applied for all her university courses so that’s exciting.

here’s what jane and i did on our holiday.

on the way there on Monday we stopped at Matapouri and scrambled up cliff sides to reach the mermaid pools, followed by scrambles back down then a walk over the cliffs (on a formed track) to another beah before heading back to the car.

we then drove to our accommodation in Russell , followed by a sit on the beach then dinner in the very posh Duke of Marlborough (it’s approximately half the cost dinning with the two of us rather than the usual four!)

this was the view from our holiday house deck on the first day when the sky still contained elements of blue

day two we went for a walk over and beyond flagstaff hill after breakfast in a cafe. the walk claimed to be ‘strenuous’ which in practice involved even more danger than the climb to the mermaid pools the day before.

there were more bits of frayed ropes dangling off trees which we had to use to dangle our way off sharp rocks, relying on the knots of strangers to hold us as we lowed ourselves gradually off cliff edges.

you can only do the walk at two hours either side of the tide, so we assumed that meant at those times of day you could walk round the sandy coast. we were wrong.

at one point we were clinging to the edge of some rocks on tiny footholes and just had to let ourselves drop in to the ocean and hope it wasn’t too deep. we ended up with wet shorts, but managed to keep all our technology dry in our backpacks. when we saw the next beach had a footpath back up to flagstaff hill we took that rather than risk our lives any more round the coast. our shoes eventually dried about two days later

here’s a dangly rope to help you drop off the edge of this bit of cliff

i stopped taking photos after a while as it got too dangerous!

you can see the triangular roofs of our holiday house on the horizon here

on Wednesday we drove out west a little to do a long walk across to another beach. the weather was starting to draw in (the wind was picking up and the sun was rarely seen)

the walk was up for ages then down for ages so good exercise. probably best that we didn’t do it in blistering sun. still ~100% humidity though

at the bay there was an old whaling station which is where they took the whales they’d just caught and boiled them down in to whatever stuff they created from whales.

in the evening we went back to the duke of marlborough for dinner as it was so nice.

on thursday the rain and wind really set in to we decided that was going to be our day to go to the Waitangi Treaty grounds across the way. it was so rainy we decided to drive rather than get the boat/walk

on the way we met up with a new photo friend who talked at us for an hour and a half. we stopped briefly in paihia then had lunch and a wander round the museum at waitangi