Happy New Year for 2011

Happy New Year to anyone that reads this and follows my journey. Well, here we are in 2011 – the years fly by. Seems only yesterday we were planning for computer crashes as the clock rolled over to the year 2000.

After a quiet New Year in Palmerston North, with Jonathan, Olivia and Callum ( and Jenna and Hershey of course) Peter and I had a sightseeing morning with Christine – whose driveway our bus had been inhabiting each night – and we went up to the wind farm overlooking Palmerston North. I didn’t realise the turbines were so big! We think they are quite attractive, although I think sometimes they look like the pictures from War of the Worlds.

Palmerston North is quite a pretty town, although it is not close to any beaches, it does have the river winding through it with lovely riverside parks and the little Centennial Lake ( thats me with the ducks having a drink before my dinner).

Then we left on 3rd January to drive back to Auckland – took it slowly and explored some side roads and potential camping sites for the future – right beside the railway line at Erua where the Last railway spike was rammed home joining the north end to the south end of the main truank line in 1908, and at the YMCA camp beside the Mangawhero river.

Beautiful spot and quite empty that day.

We went in to see what we could of the Raurimu spiral and then came up the back road into Taumaranui on the other side of the river. Watched four mothers and six kids get set up in hired canoes to go down the Wanganui river - I got more grey hair just watching them, One kid was crying "I dont want to go" before they even set off - and none knew any paddling strokes except forwards and hopefully backwards. We followed them down through the first couple of kilometres and then decided it wasn't really our problem. Love weather for them, and very low water so hopefully they had fun.

Home again and now back to work. It is taking a while to settle.

The garden had grown madly - a bucket and a half full of beans alone! nd a few days later a bucket and a half of lovely new potatoes.

Hopefully someone enjoys reading my blogs - I put them here mainly as a record for myself and Peter - good backup - never too sure if they are a bit of an ego trip though, but at least it is better than bombarding friends and family with long emails with pictures! Hopefullyalso a bit more private than Facebook.