H: We are so excited about coming home and seeing everyone but are equally as disappointed to be leaving NZ. Christchurch has been everything we wanted. From our apartment we had a view of the park, river, willow trees and ducks. From my work I can see snow capped mountains, the port hills and the sea. We’re really hoping to be back one day soon :o)

H: Mount Cook was the last thing on the South Island that we really wanted to do before we came home so we gave up on our packing and went to Mount Cook for a couple of days. It’s the highest mountain in New Zealand and as we were there just at the turn to winter it was especially beautiful with a fresh covering of snow.

We had been told about a lovely hotel in Mount Cook village and we thought we’d go just to have a look but we were definitely going to stay in a youth hostel. At least that’s what I thought – Greg as usual thought I was being mean and wanted to splash out. So we ended up staying in a lovely posh chalet with a view of Mount Cook :o) Not a bad note to finish NZ on!

H: We also did a slight diversion and drove South to Wellington as we wanted to see where we nearly went to live. It’s a nice city but (and I’m biased again), Christchurch is better :o)

H: Having said that, we walked the Tongariro Crossing which is perhaps one of the most beautiful walks we’ve done. The walk is alongside a volcano, complete with old lava flows and emerald pools. The only scary part was walking along the ridge with galeforce winds pushing us ever nearer the edge. I think I’m not eating enough Cadburys.

H: We were feeling brave so decided we’d venture onto the North Island. We flew to Rotorua which is a geo-thermal area and you could smell the sulphur from the plane. It’s not as stunning as Yellowstone was but it was interesting to see how the town has been built around the geysers and mud pools.

The North Island is very different to the South Island and I’m ashamed to admit that as we sat in 3 whole lanes of traffic we felt ever-so-slightly nervous of driving. There’s 3 million people on the north island, compared to 1 million on the south and the islands are a similar size so it’s a lot busier on the north island. I’m probably biased but the South is lots prettier (sorry Des and Hannah).

H: I managed to persuade Greg to be adventurous and we went zorbing which is basically like being strapped into the middle of a big football and pushed down a hill.

H: We went to Dunedin with Tash and Joris who were selling a car to someone in Dunedin so the boys got to drive the little ‘bug’ and we got the jeep :o) They’d foolishly let us book the accommodation for the weekend. We found a cheap farm-stay with a mad old woman called Betty but told Tash and Joris it would only have electricity in daylight hours, hot water once the sun had heated it up, and an outside loo. So they were already a bit worried as we pulled up at midnight (after a long drive from Christchurch) to find no-one at home, and another family in the cottage we were meant to have. So we spent the next hour trying to find somewhere cheap, failed and had to pay $150 for a night – the most expensive room we have had since we left the UK (apart from sharing Siobhan’s Marriot room).



We were very cultured and went to “NZ’s only castle” which actually is not a castle but a big home built with turrets.



Then we went to fulfil my dream of seeing penguins. But after 2 hours in the little hideout, no penguins but the tide coming in (which meant less space between the cliffs, sea and sea lions) we gave up ?




We went to the World’s Steepest Street on Sunday and left Greg to walk up while the 3 of us drove up. I boycotted the Cadbury factory tour in support of the UK-Cadburys-Is-Best cause. Instead we went to the Moeraki Boulders which are strange circular lumps of rock on the beach. Greg was suffering with a severe bout of man-flu (aka a sniffle) and thought the world was going to end. He’s better now…

H: We went to Hanmer with Des and Hannah, friends from the UK. First we climbed a mountain to make sure we were really stiff and achey, and then we went to the thermal hot pools to recover. We didn’t read the signs right though and it took us about 5 goes to find the hot pool. Which was over the hot spring and so very smelly. Its good for the skin though – or something like that. There is something nice though about being in a hot pool and looking up at the stars…

H: Ness and I had a lovely fews days in one of the prettiest towns in New Zealand. We climbed Roy’s Peak which is a 1500m ‘hill’ (and Nessa’s first climb over about 600m; impressively she was still talking to me by the end).

H: This was the start of Greg’s mountaineering career. The weather had been kind enough to rain only a little in the last week and so there was a thin covering of ice on the side of the mountain, which meant that crampons couldn’t be used, but also making rock climbing very dangerous for a beginner. So instead of Mount Aspiring, Greg and his guide (Murray) climbed a mountain called Rolling Pin; having seen the photos I still have no idea how it got its name!

H: The “time is running out so might as well do it properly” rule wasn’t applied here, in an effort to get us both out of doing bungy jumps. Nessa however went for it and did all 3, including the Kawarau Bridge (the original Bridge), The Nevis Highwire (134m, 8sec drop from a cable car suspended over a canyon in the middle of nowhere) and The Ledge (which overlooks Queenstown). She however did take on our motto and was dipped completely in the river for the Kuwarau Bridge Jump – apparently the furthest to go in for a few days.

Greg and I were brave and did the Luge run (a bit like tobogganing but on concrete) and the Shotover Jet (they spin you near canyon walls).

H: I don’t mind so much that we didn’t get the reflection at Milford Sound now because this completely made up for that. Doubtful Sound doesn’t get many tourists apparently because it’s not so easy to get to. But ‘not easy’ turned out to be taking a boat across a beautiful lake, a coach over a pretty beautiful pass and then getting on the boat in the Sound. So not too painful really.

We have started implementing the “time is running out so might as well do it properly” approach and booked on an overnight cruise. It was seriously beautiful here – blue skies, rolling mountains, sun and best of all, no roads and no people (apart from the 50 on our boat)…

We even tried our hand at kayaking, whilst speculating who the famous Russian was on board. He looked like a very ugly Gérard Depardieu and seemed to have a personal photographer and honestly his poses really made you want to jump over the side. He didn’t even smile, he just looked at the camera and tossed his greasy hair around.

And in an un-Russian related incident we did have a go at swimming in the Sound (9°c) - although I was helped a little in getting in, thanks to my lovely sister.

H: This is another of the Great Walks, and was very un-painful – largely due to the fact that we stuck to the no. of days as recommended (3). Summer came a bit late to NZ and I know these photo’s don’t really show it but it was still in full swing while we were away :o) Ness left us to this, I think she had been put off by our previous walking disasters…

Please don’t be fooled by the size of Greg’s rucasc. He wanted to have a go at carrying something bigger but I can promise that it didn’t mean I took more clothes, nor that my rucsac was any lighter than it normally is.

H: Milford Sound is best seen either in clear blue skies and still water (so you can get the amazing Mitre-Peak-Reflection photo). Or when it’s chucking it down and you get to see the hundreds of waterfalls that appear when it rains (which might have started to make up for Iguacu).

We unfortunately saw it in neither of these 2 states but it was still pretty beautiful. But so cloudy you couldn’t really see the top of Mitre Peak but I think maybe I’m asking too much.

H: I thought I’d welcome Ness to New Zealand by dragging her on a Hen’s Night of a friend from work. She didn’t seem to phased by being out with a few too many accountants and even accompanied us to “Boogie Night’s”, Christchurch’s answer to Klute (for Durham-ers) and The Irish (for Nottingham-ers).

H: We’ve managed to enjoy ourselves even when we haven’t had time off from work.
At the start of the year we went to a friend from work’s wedding (the first one of 6 in 2007)… His wife’s family is from Niue (a pacific island North of New Zealand) and so the wedding was full of traditional dancing and singing, complete with men in grass skirts doing a very scary dance (like the Haka). Please note the lovely jewellery that the bride and bridesmaids are wearing.



Then I left Greg in peace and did a months worth of rehearsals in a week with a massed choir made up of choirs from around Christchurch. We did the Bach Mass in B Minor with David Wilcocks (who had come over from England) in the cathedral. There were a few very dodgy parts but we all managed to start and finish together.



Then there was a comet that was passing NZ so we (along with a lot of Christchurch) went up into the hills to spot it. In the process of scrambling up some rocks in very unsuitable shoes and no torch we caught a great sunset. We seem to get a few of them here – something to do with the clouds and what they call nor’westers…



And finally we went with some friends to see Bic Runga in concert who was brilliant. The venue of the concert sort of summed up NZ to us – it was open air at a winery, miles away from anywhere with rolling hills in the background. Unfortunately though NZ doesn’t always have great weather and the original date was rained off so we had to go back 2 days later!

H: Stewart Island is a small island off the South of the South Island of New Zealand. We flew from the mainland in a 6 seater plane that was just bigger than our car which seemed to fly only just above the trees. The flight was great but the landing was even better – on a sandy beach, miles away from civilisation.

We spent the day there and slept at the back-country hut for the night (guess what –we had pasta and sauce for tea). The following day started off blissfully – bright blue sunny skies and beautiful scenery, and just the tiniest bit of mud for the 14km walk.

We were at the second hut by 1pm and thought that was too early to stop (the huts just have wooden benches and beds) so we carried on to the next one. Which was a huuuuuuuuge mistake. 5kms and 3 hours later my boots were covered in a nice-brown-runny-goo and I was starting not to have fun. Another 3km and 2 hours on my ankles had this nice-brown-runny-goo on them too and my socks no longer had colour. And I was starting to get a tiny bit tearful. Another km and half an hour later I was sobbing and the nice-brown-runny-goo was up to my knees. And the rest just got more miserable. 12 hrs of walking and 25km later, after lot of uphills and downhills and slipping and sliding and picking-foot-up-and-leaving-shoe-in-mud incidents we reached our second hut.

The second day should have been easy – only another 12kms. But that didn’t take into account the trauma of putting on un-washed boots covered in nice-brown-runny-goo, and the fact that our feet still weren’t in a good mood with us, and there was more of the gooey stuff to come. Oh and I’m on a no-chocolate month so there was no Cadburys to help. Which was perhaps the hardest thing to deal with.

Anyway we arrived at Halfmoon Bay in Oban, the little township of the island and did as little as possible for the rest of the day. We had a lovely couple of days to recover (and try and clean our boots and get the mud out of our clothes). We went over to Ulva Island which is one of the few islands that they have managed to eradicate all pests from so the bird life was good!

We’re now back in Christchurch, the mud stains are starting to go but I still have brown toe nails. And I am never ever walking that far again. And sorry for the lack of photos – we were too miserable/concentrating to get the camera out!!

H: The Kepler track is one of NZ’s ‘Great Walks’ and was a 4 day walk staying in basic huts on the way. With the incentive that we had to carry our own food and clothes for 4 days I managed to pack very light, but still found space for the obligatory bar of Cadburys.

Walking was great, weather beautiful, scenery stunning, food boring – couldn’t face a fourth day of cup-a-soup for breakfast and pasta-and-sauce for tea, so decided to roll the last 2 days walking into one. We walked the last 16 miles in one day and then drove the 8 hours back to Christchurch. I moaned about my feet most of the way – G just turned the radio up. Fortunately he couldn’t find the cricket on the radio or I might have had to think about walking home.

H: We surprised Greg’s parents with tickets for the Tranz Alpine railway that goes from coast to coast instead of 4 hours in a car with us (which they were probably very grateful for). We enjoyed the ride home and seeing the scenery that we had missed on the way over because it had been raining.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2007!

H: I think we are getting Ralph and Linda into shape. There was a break in the rain/clouds just before sunset so we took the chance to go to Lake Matheson which is the most photographed lake in NZ – very pretty with clear skies and still water. We knew time was tight because the sun was going down and Linda was raring to go, trying to get out of the car before we had stopped.

We set off to walk (a couple of miles) round to the ‘view of views platform’ and got there in time for a lovely still reflective lake. We fully expected Ralph and Linda to arrive a good 10 minutes after us but 2 minutes later, looking quite red and gasping for breath they both arrived with camera at the ready. Apparently Ralph had wanted to take his fleece off but knew it would slow him down so didn’t dare!

H: After a day of rest (the whale watching) we took Greg’s parents to the west coast where it rains 200 days of the year and makes Manchester look like its entering a drought. However it does mean that the bush (kiwi for vegetation) is very lush. Mid-way down the west coast there are two of the world’s 3 glaciers that come down low enough to be in a ‘temperate climate’ (which makes me think of warm places but it wasn't). Which means that G and I set off on an all day walk on Fox glacier and Greg’s parents ask whether they could maybe do the helihike instead.

Both trips were amazing. The glacier is huge and is one of a few in the world that is advancing. Our guide goes ahead with an ice axe and cuts us a path to walk on, and we concentrate on digging our crampons in and making sure we avoided the crevasses. The ice is a strange mix of colours, white, black (where it’s picked up dirt along the canyon) and a beautiful bright blue.

The weather was bad and Greg’s parents were lucky to get a helicopter to the top. And were even luckier when the weather cleared enough for the helicopters to go back in and pick them up after they waited nearly an hour for them!

H: Greg’s parents learnt quickly and chose our Christmas present wisely – a very non-energetic trip on a boat to see the whales at Kaikoura. And our luck was in again, instead of seeing the average of 2 sperm whales, we saw 7 and a pod of pilot whales – which apparently are quite rare and we think they were probably telling the truth as all the staff went on deck with cameras!

It’s hard to make out quite how big they are but a couple of them were easily the length of the boat we were on. And the guides were great – he could tell when they were about to dive and told us when to click the cameras. We have some great whale-tail footage but our finger response time was slow and we didn’t do so well on the stills!

H: We didn’t do the Kiwi BBQ on a beach thing but we did drag Greg’s parents to a ‘H & G’ Xmas which involved being made to walk 2 hours before they were given a picnic lunch in the wind sat in a field. But they didn’t book a flight straight home so we think either they didn’t mind, or thought it was just a one off.

H: Cape Farewell is the northern most point of the South Island and comes complete with a beautiful coastline and some brilliant seals.

I’d managed to talk Greg into going away on a weekend the ashes was on, but it meant listening to the boring commentary for the full 7 hours in the car, and then G disappearing to the local dodgy pub to watch the match after our walks…

Greg’s parents have followed in their sons footsteps and have packed their backs for a 2 month world tour. They arrived in New Zealand last week and fly from the North Island to Christchurch on Friday to spend Christmas and New Year with us.

And on that note, HAPPY CHRISTMAS and best wishes for the new year :o) Thanks for keeping in touch this year – it’s made being away from home much easier!

H: We’ve gone for the ‘cutting down gradually approach’ and waited to see how long we’d last before we had to get out again. We’ve done well I think you’ll agree – we’ve not had a whole weekend away since the end of October.

We took Friday off and on Thursday night drove for 7 hours to the very north of the South Island, over 400km, 399km of which were on single carriage roads (and some right at the top not even paved).

We stopped for something to eat in a little village called Murchison when our hire car decided to cut out. Having just driven for 2 ½ hours and not passed another car, we thought it wise to call the AA while we were around civilisation. The “AA” man came, we told him what was wrong and his exact words were “what do you want me to do about it” and his next line was “I don’t have any spare parts or anything”. Hmmm. We think maybe he was the local butcher dressed up in overalls. And to be honest I could have done a better job, I would have at least opened the bonet and made some mumblings about engines, heaters and nothing serious…

Anyway after a few stalling incidents we arrived in Takaka and the following day did a great 6 hr walk along the top part of the Abel Tasman Coastal Track. We were very surprised to see how different the bush was to what we’ve seen here so far. It’s really tropical with beautiful golden sandy beaches and sparklingly blue, yet deceivingly cold, water.

H: Well we have been housebound for the last 2 weeks because of two little matches called the Ashes. Which Greg has been getting into work by 7 for so that he can be home by 3.30 to watch... And then spent the whole evening glued to the telly and not hearing a word I said…

But luckily it wasn’t on this weekend so we went for a days tramp with John and Judith today at a mountain pass about 2 hours from here. After a very steep climb we were rewarded with the usual great views over the mountain range.

Judith and I were sensible and went down the way we had gone up. John and Greg however decided to go ‘off piste’ and try the alternative route down. Which required going down through the bush and down the side of a fairly vertical mountain side. And not on a path.

Judith and I went to the nearby hot springs to wait for them, and 90 minutes later two bedraggled men came in looking like they’d been in a car wreck. Both covered in blood and scratches and barely able to walk (well Greg couldn’t, John was OK).

H: We only managed 2 weeks at work in a row before needing to do something different again (and it was Gs birthday) – so this time we went swimming with dolphins :o) We’ve had lots of amazing experiences but this one we definitely wont forget in a hurry.





We got dropped in the ocean in full wetsuit gear and snorkels and told to act dolphin-like and make noises. I didn’t enter into the spirit of it as much as Greg did who hmmd his little heart out and didn’t scare the dolphins away – maybe under the water G is actually tuneful?




There were so many of them and they come really close to you. They also like to swim in circles round you and you have to try and follow them to hold their attention. My snorkel mask didn’t fit and the woman said not to laugh underwater as it breaks the seal. But everytime they did these circles around me, and I couldn’t keep up, I started laughing and nearly drowned on several occasions. I certainly have had my salt intake for a year.




It feels like a bit of a dream now – they are so beautiful and because you’re looking down, you don’t notice anyone else around you and so felt really private like it was just you and them.




They then followed the boat for about 20 minutes on the way back to shore. I think I want one.

H: We had to work for 3 whole weeks in a row before we got to go away again. There was a bank holiday and we decided we hadn’t quite had enough of mountains yet, so drove for 5 hours to Lake Wanaka which is so beautiful and surrounded by snow capped mountains. Again. And mainly with pure blue skies…

Really living the high life – the partners at work let us stay in their unit on a resort which saved us from a backpackers :o) And I was very kind and cooked for Greg twice in a row. Isn’t he lucky?

Did a couple of walks into the mountains, and spent an afternoon at Puzzling World… there tagline is right – prefect for adults of all ages!

Got to go to work tomorrow. We’re researching on the internet how to afford to travel and not have to work but there doesn’t seem to be much advice…