Woo!

Another good walk.  I went back to the track I discovered on Saturday, and instead of looping across the tunnel entrance I carried on up the hill, and got to the road that runs up the ridge towards the Mt Victoria lookout.  If I'd had more time I would have carried on down the other end of the tunnel just to say I did.  But it seemed like it was going to rain, and believe it or not it didn't occur to me that I could go back through the tunnel!  I'll have a look at my photos later and pick one out to post. [later] So nice of the Wellington City Council to put up these map boards that show where I got to.  If you look at the full-size version, you'll see that I've marked where I started from, and also marked the two ends of the tunnel in hot pick for high visibilty.  To get an idea of scale - the oval-shaped thingy is the velodrome, and the light green rectangular area just below it and to the left a bit is a football field.  You'll just have to imagine the height for now.

Another assault on Colonial Knob, this time starting at the Elsdon entrance which is a higher/steeper climb.  Although my fitness is coming back, it's not good enough yet - I didn't make it to my previous "best" point.

Easter Camp

Oh yes, I was going to write about Easter Camp.  This was the annual camp organised by the Red Ravens, in fact it was the Ravens' 10th anniversary - well done chaps. The venue for the camp was the Makahika Outdoor Centre near Levin. It has a large hall with bunkrooms off the sides, and all the usual kitchen and ablution facilities that one tends to expect at the these places, and a big mostly-flat grass area that provided plenty of room for both a combat arena and tents.  Not being equipped for camping, Sarah and I slept in one of the bunkrooms - warm and comfortable but annoyingly close to both the late-night and early-morning conversations that take place in the hall (and that's my worst criticism of the whole weekend). The rest of my friends set up a "period" encampment near the entrance to the hall, complete with fire pit for cooking.  Colin made some very successful bread, Janine cooked assorted other things, and (Graeme?) made some rather nice Ippocras. We met some people from the Broken Barrow Inn including Paul, Danny and Wade who cooked the feast for Sunday night, and Ginny who made the subtleties.  I helped out in the kitchen, which was my very first experience of a feast from the other side of the operation, and I have to say I rather enjoyed the experience. Many fun and amusing things happened, most of which come into the category of "you had to be there".

Mt Victoria seems to be absolutely littered with walking tracks.  Today I found one that starts in Hataitai right beside the tunnel and goes up the hill, so I went for an exploratory climb.&nsp; Before long I was up above the road listening to the traffic whizzing past below me, then I carried on up a bit more and found a side track that took me across to the other side of the tunnel entrance, towards the sports fields I explored last Saturday.  The pedestrian overbridge took me back to complete the circle. I have lived in the Wellington area for mumbleteen years, and must have driven under this bridge hundreds of times - but last Saturday was the first time I've ever walked on it.

Ah, now that's what I call a walk

A real serious walk today.  Geoffrey came with me to Colonial Knob where we went in at the entrance beside Spicer Park, up past the reservoir (the one that's still there) and on to the point where the track meets up with the gravel road.  From here we went down and turned right along a side track, and followed some firebreaks that eventually took us to the "clean landfill" which we went through, out to the road proper and then up the road to the car.  A round trip which I have been wanting to try for a while, but wasn't quite brave enough to do on my own as it isn't entirely clear which way to go. There are rabbits on Colonial Knob, at least on the lower slopes.  This is one of them.  (There's no larger version this time, this image is cropped down rather than shrunk.)

Interesting and different

Today after waving goodbye to Dad who is off to China again, I chauffered Sarah around her manuka plots, which involved some walking.  As I understand it, the story goes like this: Sarah is doing her Masters in biology, and studying evolution/adaptation in plants.  She has four varieties of manuka plants, and four different coastal habitats.   She has planted seeds from each variety in each habitat, and is monitoring them as they grow, in order to discover how the different varieties adapt to the different habitats.  Exactly what she'll be looking for is a mystery to me, and probably way too technical as I know practically nothing about plants.  I never studied much biology at school, I preferred maths and physics. So today I went with Sarah to the four planting places.  The first one was easy, it was beside the road and only a little bit swampy.  The second one was a lot more swampy - I ventured in partway, then decided it was too hard to climb over the fence in the swamp, I would probably fall over and get myself all wet which wouldn't be fun as there were still two more places to visit, and more importantly if my camera fell in it probably wouldn't survive the experience.  Okay, so I'm rationalising, whatever, I handed the camera over to Sarah, and went and sat in the car.  Place number three was easier, it was close to the road again, and dry.  Place number four was my favourite.  It's on the hillside overlooking Pukerua Bay, and it involves a ten-minute walk along the railway line and then clambering around the hillside - and the view is fabulous. The project is still at a very early stage. Most of the seedlings have not yet poked their heads above ground, and the ones that have are very difficult to distinguish from the grasses that are popping up along with them.  My plan from now on is to do the monitoring trip with Sarah once a month and take photos. All in all, I probably got about half an hour's walking in, and not much of it uphill.  But the fresh air was good.
"Somewhere around here I have eight plots..."

That was close

I nearly didn't get to walk up a hill today.  But luckily I went for a walk from Sue's place down to the gourmet burger bar to get something for tea, which meant walking back up.  It's not very far or even very steep, but in my present condition it got my heart rate way up so it must have been good for me.

Getting technical for a minute

I hate spam.  The stuff that arrives as email, that is, not Spam which comes in a tin and I've never tasted. Anyway, I've just found www.spamblogging.com in which somebody called Eric has posted a lot of useful information - some of it deeply technical, but some of it useful for home users too - and various bits of news.  Seems like a handy site for keeping up with the latest. Also, thanks to Eric at Spamblogging, I found... possibly one of the weirdest sites on the net... Spam Radio where spam emails get sliced and diced, and converted into an audio channel through the magic of voice synthesis.  The only trouble is, it needs a better network connection than mine to listen to it.  But it's a fun concept.

An uphill battle

It's a bit depressing.  It's been so long since I stopped seriously walking that my fitness level has dropped off very badly.  So today I did a walk that should have taken no more than half an hour, and spent about an hour on it - and although part of that time was spent standing quietly and looking for birds, there was a fair bit of waiting to catch my breath too. I went into the Colonial Knob reserve at the Spicer Park entrance, and took the side track that stops at a stream where there might once have been a bridge and carries on over the other side.  I didn't feel like getting my feet wet and scrambling up the bank, and time was getting on so I went back.

Back into it for real

After spending time at the Family History Centre this afternoon, I finally started walking again for real.  I parked in the first carpark I found at Hataitai park, and started walking uphill. First I encountered a rugby practice.  The team were mostly wearing yellow and black horizontal stripes so I'm guessing it was a Wellington rep team of some sort.  I carried on up the road to the velodrome.  Behind the velodrome is the start of one of the many walkways on Mt Victoria, so I started along the track and wandered around among the trees for a while then came back.  Next along the road is another rugby club, and then it loops around and comes back down towards the tennis courts, and back to where I had parked the car.  About an hour all up - not bad going, for starting all over again.

Having finally kick-started this blog again, I want to write some more, but it will have to wait, because my next priority is some work I have to do for InternetNZ's anti-spam project.

Well it's a start

I have to confess, my fitness level has dropped way down.  I stopped walking when I caught a dreaded lurgy, and totally failed to start up again.  So I have to start again from scratch, and just when winter's starting to close in, too.  So, don't laugh, but when I was in town today I walked as briskly as I could manage, everywhere I went, and that's my way of starting again.  Tomorrow I must do better!

Long time no see

Oh dear.  It's been a while since I've blogged.  It's been almost as long since I walked up any hills.  BAD GIRL!  I'll start again soon, I promise. So here's what I've been doing instead: Genealogy, sewing, fixing up computers, Easter camp, running a club. Genealogy Among other things, I've been trying to find out more about my Swedish great-grandfather who was born in Göteborg about 1862 and came to New Zealand in 1895.  Right now I'm trying to find his birth record, which means hunting through Swedish record books on microfilm at the LDS. Sewing (1) I signed up for a pattern-making course, which is giving me some useful skills, but requires me to spend time at home sewing between the weekly classes.  Most of the time this is okay. Sewing (2) I came up with a nice design for bottle bags, and made a few to sell at the Easter camp.  The idea is that, at medievalist events, you don't want nasty modern drink bottles and suchlike spoiling the atmosphere.  So you put your bottle inside an appropriate-looking cloth bag, and although it's not really period to drink out of cloth bags either, it doesn't look quite so egregiously wrong.  More people should use these things at events. Fixing up computers The usual stuff, more or less.  They don't work quite the way they're supposed to, so people call me.  Much more of this and I'll have to start charging - but then it would be a job and I don't want that kind of job exactly. Easter Camp This deserves a whole blog entry to itself, so it's going to get one. Running a club Okay, so it doesn't take a lot of time normally, but there is a feast planned for June and the time to start swinging into action is now.  More about the feast later.

Just when I thought I was getting bored with walking around the neighbourhood, I went down a side street tonight that I hadn't been down before, and found this view of a house with a flagpole flying the Jolly Roger.  It's good see Kiwi individuality asserting itself in interesting ways.  This flag should be visible from the motorway, but I've never noticed it, maybe it's new.  Oh, the roof isn't really striped, it's just what happened to the tiles when I shrunk the picture - click to get the larger, slightly better-looking picture.

The amazing shrinking me

I finally patched my favourite pair of jeans, only to find that they're *really* loose.  I think I'm going to take the plunge and buy a smaller pair.

A week in review

Somehow a whole week has gone by and I haven't blogged it.  Sorry.  I have done some walking though. Tuesday: Being the last Tuesday of the month it was time for a Uniforum regional meeting.  I walked down to the railway station and caught the train into town, knowing I would get a ride home with Steve.  On the way to the meeting I detoured to take pictures of the Cave Troll in Civic Square - the delightful beastie that graced the entrance of the Embassy Theatre when Fellowship of the Ring was first released, it was brought out again for the Return of the King premier.  It's much easier to photograph in Civic Square without the trolley wires and things that get in the way at the Embassy.  I wore sandals that day because it was so hot I couldn't stand the thought of putting socks and shoes on - bad choice, I gave myself a big fat nasty blister on the ball of my foot.  And just to make life more fun, Steve had left his carpark access card in a very safe place - inside his car, inside the carpark building which was safely locked up by the time the meeting was over.  Doh!  Digby gave us a ride to the railway station, but of course we had to walk home at the other end.  Up the hill.  Still wearing the same sandals that gave me the blister. Wednesday: I gave my blister the day off. Thursday: My car was booked in for some work and a WOF, so I drove into town and spend the day there.  Mostly I was in the library doing some family history research, being nice to my nearly recovered blister, but I did a little bit of wandering around.  No hills. Friday: <thinks> Oh, yes.  That was the day Steve came home earlier than I expected, and when I got home a short while later I didn't realise he was there, and I thought I was going nuts because I knew I had turned the alarm on when I went out.  I don't think I did any walking that day, other than around the shopping centre - it was too hot. Saturday: I woke up way too early and couldn't get back to sleep.  So I did something really weird: I did my walk in the morning.  I enjoyed it a lot, because I was listening to Kim Hill on the radio, and I usually find the first two hours of her show to be be the best.  Most Saturdays I sleep through it and listen to it later on the video recorder (we have Sky Digital which relays a few radio stations).  This week Kim talked to a correspondent from Houston about politics, Bush's "election candy" Mars mission, and the death penalty.  Up until the death penalty part I had quite liked the correspondent but then I got the horrible feeling he was one of the many Texan citizens who think the state has a right to play God.  Then on a lighter note Kim interviewed an astronomer, about Mars of course but also about the "spokes" in Saturn's rings and the rotational period of Uranus.  Great stuff, may she never run out of astronomers to interview.  While all this was going on, I a walked a long uphill route along the streets on the hillside here, right up to the top of Victory Crescent and on to the far end of Chastudon Place where some pricey houses look out over the rest of Tawa.  This was the furthest I had been on that uphill route and it still only took me an hour - I must be getting something right. Sunday: Dance practice was suffiently energetic, thanks, and besides, it was absolutely bucketing down with rain.  Not very summery but it will make the farmers happy I suppose. Monday: Oh, that's today already.  I was grumpy and didn't feel like doing much of anything but I might as well be grumpy out walking as moping around at home.  I went down to the Linden shops and just kept going along Collins Ave which was a gentle uphill gradient - not punishing like Fyvie Ave or the Scots Bransle.  Then I turned around and came home to cook tea, still a little grumpy. Now, here's that cave troll. Grrrr! Take that, you... you... kids!

Excuses

I was tired.  It drizzled.  I was busy.  I was job-hunting.  My legs were aching.  I went shopping.  I forgot.  I did enough exercise in the weekend.  I had a bad hair day.  I walked from library to the supermarket and back, does that count? Oh well.  I'll do better tomorrow.

Dance practice was nicely energetic today, so no hills were required.  Instead, I went to meet the new baby Isabelle, and then played geek for a few hours.

Another late-evening walk around the streets.  Tonight I wanted to spend about an hour walking, but I didn't really want to cover the same old streets again.  So when I got to the main road I headed north, where I hadn't gone before since there are no obvious blocks to circumnavigate.  I decided I would go in that direction for half an hour and see where it got me - and where it got me was all the way to the next major intersection, and up the hill to the start of the road that goes to the rubbish tip.  Woo!  From there, I could go up the road towards the tip, then take a side-street that leads to a shortcut to the unofficial dirt road that comes out just up the street from home.  Cool! I could do all the uphill stuff in the middle of the walk and finish by going downhill - so that's what I did, and I finished with five minutes to spare.  I think I'm going to use that route again.

Well fancy that!

I parked beside the Eldson Youth Camp and was about to head off along the usual familiar track, when I realised there was another track off to the right.  This had previously been overgrown and messed up due to flooding, and until today I wasn't even sure there it was meant to be passable.  But apparently the Porirua City Council have done some work on it, and now there is a clear path.  This path skirts along the edge of the reserve and comes out at the Aparangi Cres entrance - an entrance of which I was previously unaware.  After that, it's not so much a track as an old firebreak which wanders along a short way and then goes pretty much straight up the side of the ridge, at what feels like a nearly vertical angle (in reality probably about 30 degrees).  This firebreak-track also shows signs of recent work, some of the gorse having been hacked back.  Unfortunately there are new gorse seedlings appearing already so it's a never-ending job for them. I bravely struggled all the way to the top of the ridge and was rewarded with quite a good view of the Porirua harbour and surroundings.  Being such dull weather though, the photos didn't come out very well.  This one was taken on the way down, perhaps you can get a hint of how steep it is from the photo.  The big white rectangular building is the former Mitsubushi vehicle assembly plant known as Todd Park, named after either Todd Motors or the Todd family, I'm not sure which.  When I was shown around the facility in the late 1980s I was told it was (or had been) the largest factory floor in the southern hemisphere.  Sadly, it became less and less economically viable to assemble cars or trucks in New Zealand, Mitsubishi Motors started importing complete vehicles, and eventually the plant closed in about 1998.

It's yet another windy day in Wellington.  But at least it isn't raining, so I might just go and see if the bush tracks have dried out enough to walk on.

The sun came out this afternoon, so after two days of physical inactivity it was time for a serious walk.  I took the "high road" to the Tawa shopping centre: Fyvie Ave, Davidson Cres, Turkington St, Franklin Rd, then down Hampton Hill Rd and the pedestrian shortcut to Lincoln Ave and from there to the shops.  I came back via the Grasslees Reserve, where I found the perfect place to sit and ponder the world for a few minutes, then along the main road and up that last little vicious steep bit to home. At the Grasslees reserve there's a memorial to Elsdon Best who once lived there.  There are two plaques, which say: NEARBY AT GRASSLEES FARM ELSDON BEST MAORI ETHNOLOGIST WAS BORN ON 30 JUNE 1856 HIS ASHES LIE HERE and 1856-1931 Haere ra te Pehi Haere ki te Hono i Wairua

Rain stopped play

It's been horrible blustery weather for two days now, so no walking has been done.  I'm working on Minnie the Media PC instead, and I've just started another blog about that.

It rained heavily last night and this morning so bush walks were out of the question, and it was yet another walk around the streets of Tawa.  Steve came too, and we went as far as the Tawa railway station (about a kilometre away).  The railway station footbridge was the nearest we got to a hill (not counting the climb up our street to get home).  We came back along the other side of the line, and dropped in to see K and J before negating the whole exercise by getting fish and chips for tea.

But can he a-Ford it?

For tonight's walk I went down the hill, over to the Linden shops, and explored a little around the residential area over that side of the valley.  I spent about 90 minutes all up, including photo-opportunities and catching-my-breath stops.  I think half the "boy racers" in Wellington must live around here, and whoever made this letterbox was rather fond of Chevs - if you look at the larger version of the picture you'll see the badge on top of the, er, rocker cover.

A picture from Wednesday

Tamara sent me a couple of pictures from the "A&S Water Tank and Dancing Extravaganza" as she described it in her email, so here's one of them.  It isn't actually one of the pictures I took - I can tell because I'm in it, way over the right-hand side.  I'm afraid I dropped out of the main bunch when the going got difficult and it seemed like I was really just getting in the way, and that was when I took over the camera.

A neighbourhood wander

By the time I felt it had cooled down enough to go walking it was nearly dark, so I walked around the neighbourhood streets rather than going off into the bush which I normally prefer.  Going down the street means I have to finish with a steep uphill to come home, instead of a nice downhill winding-down stage, but sometimes I just have to live with that.  I went down to the Linden shopping area, along a back street to the sports ground, then back along the main road and up the hill to home.  About 45 minutes worth, at my pace.

Getting serious

Okay, it was time for a proper serious walk tonight after a slack couple of days.  I took Steve with me and and we made an assault on Colonial Knob from the Elsdon end.  I really had hoped I would improve on my previous best effort but it was not to be - we were defeated by my less than optimal fitness level and mud.  We did go for nearly an hour before we reached a point where we decided that discretion really was the better part of valour for us (although not for the rugby players that were out for some pre-season training).  There was a tree that I really wanted to take a picture of but my camera batteries went flat - all three sets.  That's the trouble with rechargeables, they have to be kept topped up or they'll be flat when you want to use them.  I think I'll get another one of those handy solar chargers and always have two sets on standby.

Encounter with a giant green oddfellow

This evening I went with a bunch of other people to Stephen and Tamara's place and helped them roll a water tank up the hill and put it in place - it looked like a giant green oddfellow rolling up the hill, and reminded me somewhat of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, although much slower.  Well, I confess I didn't actually do a lot in the way of helping but I took a lot of pictures on Tamara's camera (which by the way is much whizzier than mine).  Hopefully she'll send me one of them to post here, although I know they'll be busy getting the water supply sorted out, among other things, so it could take a few days.  After the planting of the tank (which was a mini-saga in itself) and cold drinks all round to recover, we did some dancing.

I blobbed out and didn't walk today, so here's another tourney photo.  This is from the skill-at-arms competition and shows Jean riding Cassidy in one of the four disciplines that are tested.  This one's fairly self-explanatory - the rider has to throw a spear at a target from a moving horse, which has to be at least cantering otherwise the rider loses points - and obviously points are gained depending on where the target is hit.

I didn't climb any hills today, but I did spend the afternoon wandering around town. Here's one of the photos from the tourney.  On the left is Callum riding Charlemagne, and on the right is (somebody) riding Bud.  In the background you can see Peter (on Hazel) waiting for his turn in the arena.  What can I say about these guys?  They like to dress up in metal suits and hit each other with big sticks on a hot midsummer's day, for fun.   (And yes, so far it's all guys doing the jousting, but there are several women involved in the skill-at-arms contest.)

In brief

I had a great time at the Tourney, and although I didn't walk up any hills I did get my daily exercise from dancing and generally "doing stuff".  I didn't go near the computer all weekend, and woke up this morning to 90 emails (that's not counting all the spam that my ISP filters out).  I'll post a photo or two later, because right now I have to go into town and get some tickets for Return of the King.

Finally!  The weather cleared this afternoon, and I was able to go for a walk.  Steve came with me on the theory that some fresh air and exercise might be good for his jet lag, having just arrived back from Scotland yesterday.  It was just a short excursion, down the road and back again really. I won't be doing any blogging over the weekend, as I'm intending to spend all my time at the tourney.

Is it just me or is "the internet" particularly slow these days?  Perhaps it's the school holidays or just the time of night but even downloading a single email seems to be taking forever. <gnashing of teeth>

Rain, rain, go away

Tuesday was one of those grey days with random bits of rain here and there.  So was Wednesday.  And today is turning out to be the same only worse.  Ergo, no walking and no new photos.  So, here's one from the big expedition back in December.  At one point we found ourselves walking through a cloud of tiny butterflies that looked a bit like red admirals but their wingspan was only about 3cm or so.  If you know what they are, drop me a line, you can find my address on my home page.

A bit of a rant, sorry

I have a confession to make: I have been neglecting my responsibilities.  I blame Saddam Hussein.  If he had not been such an evil dictator I would not now be so fascinated by Iraq-related blogs.  I'm a bit behind the times, I only found out about the Baghdad Blogger a short while ago when he was on Click Online, and I didn't start seriously reading his blog until a couple of weeks ago.  But when I did start, I couldn't stop.  I've been sitting up all stupid hours reading the archives (and following links and stuff) when I should have been in bed asleep.  And now I find there's a book of it.  I could have hinted to somebody that I wanted the book for Christmas and I could have been reading it in bed instead of hunched over the computer screen.  I've also been reading Riverbend's Baghdad Burning which also has a hold over me - her portrayal of the anguish that ordinary Iraqis go through is compelling. Anyway, I want to say this: It seems to me that the US has made a total stuff-up of managing post-war Iraq.  This is not a new opinion but it has been reinforced by what I've read in the blogs.  It was completely apparent from the first few days after Bush declared "major combat over" that they had NO PLANS WHATSOEVER for what to do next.  I read somewhere that some USA bigwig said the reason they didn't plan was (something to the effect that) they didn't know what the situation would be after the war.  Well, duh!  That's why you do RESEARCH, that's why you get the UN involved, that's why you work with people from other countries who have a clue about the culture.  It was REALLY DUMB of Bush to just go charging in with a cobbled-together "coalition" and a phoney pretext.  He may be able to fool enough of his own populace to get himself re-elected but every day it looks more and more as though he has just played into the hands of Osama bin Laden and his ilk by failing to plan the "what to do next" stuff. Okay, yes, Saddam had to go, should have gone years ago in fact, but the way Bush did it was completely wrong.  He should have worked with the UN instead trying to dictate to it, and there should have been Plan A, Plan B etc all the way up to Plan Z for the post-war phase, and all of those plans should have included some CONSULTATION fer chrissakes. I've just remembered something I heard years ago, just before the end of the Cold War I think, and it chills me to think of it now.  Somebody, I can't remember who, predicted that World War III would not be about USA vs Communist Russia, it would be over the Middle East.  Right now I can just about see how it could happen.  (If I were a conspiracy theorist I would suggest that Cheney is behind the whole thing and Iraq has been stuffed up on purpose to start WWIII so that the USA can win it and the Cheney gang can take over the whole world.  Fortunately I'm not a conspiracy theorist.) Okay, I've got all that off my chest, I'll go and do something useful now.

It had got to 9:20pm, the clouds had rolled in, and I needed stuff from the supermarket which was due to close at 10:00.  So tonight's walk was a token effort in the dark along the nearby dirt driveway.  Here's a picture of the poroporo bush, the whole thing this time.

Learning something new every day

I went for a walk this evening even though I went to dance practice in the morning which fulfilled my exercise obligation.  I went the "unoffical" way through to Broken Hill Rd and on into Spicer Park for a bit.  Felt good - the peace and quiet seems to help keep me sane. Here's a picture from the area that I took last month.  I had no idea what this plant was, I had never noticed it before - but that's probably because I never used to go out walking in this area.  So I asked Brenda, and she said "I'm pretty sure it's Poroporo.  According to my copy of 'The Reed Field Guide to NZ Native Trees', the name covers two species: Solanum aviculare and S. laciniatum.  S. laciniatum has purplish stems and grows as far south as Dunedin while S. aviculare has greenish stems and only gets as far south as Banks Peninsula.  They are both found in scrub and along coastal and lowland forest margins.  They can get up to 3-4m high.""  So here you are, here's a fine example of a Poroporo.  Thanks to Google I now know it is both edible and poisonous.  It's included on an indigenous menu at Praxis Cafe in Auckland - but according to the Royal New Zealand Institute of Horticulture the leaves and green berries are poisonous so don't eat it unless you know what you're doing.  I guess the fruit have to be ripe before they are cooked.

It's another weird-weather day - brilliant sunshine out one window, low cloud hugging the hill out the other. And windy, dammit. Windy season should be more or less over by now, I would have thought. So off I went to one of the more sheltered tracks on Colonial Knob to see if I could shake off my grumpy mood.  It seemed like no time at all before I got to the reservoir; in fact it was probably about 15 minutes and I didn't need as many stops to catch my breath as on previous occasions, so I must be doing something right.  From here I had a choice of walking along beside the water and then up to meet with the gravel road, or up and over the ridge to another intersection.  I didn't fancy the gravel road in the wind, and I'm here for some serious exercise anyway, so up and over the ridge it was.  The signposted intersection at the bottom of this next little valley is a bit out of date; it points the way to Reservoir No. 1 and describes the route as a bypass to Broken Hill carpark.  Well, I went round that way once before,  Reservoir No. 1 collapsed several decades ago and is now just a grassy clearing, and yes the track does loop back onto itself at a point quite near the entrance, but there is one place where you have to scramble down a bank and pick your way carefully across a stream if you don't want to get your feet wet.  There might have been a bridge once, but if there was, it has long since been washed away.  I wasn't dressed for the scramble down the bank, and I wanted to keep going so I took the other path.  This was terra incognita for me, but according to the map it goes up to the top of Colonial Knob.  Not that I would have enough time to go that far; I looked at my watch and decided I would keep going until 4:30 and then turn around.  The track here is a little harder going, it's fairly steep with occasional big steps, and "ladders" formed by tree roots.  I don't mind the uphill, it's what I'm here for, but some of the steps were a bit high for my short legs to cope with easily.  Eventually I reached one that was just too much; I sat on it for a few minutes and it was a good height for sitting on, probably even for someone taller than me.  I could have climbed up okay, but what bothered was that I would soon have to climb down again and the thought was really not appealing.  I also thought about how the track would turn to mud if it rained, and so even though it was still ten minutes to my 4:30 deadline I turned and went back the way I had come.  I briefly thought about going via the bypass track but decided against it and carried on up to the top of the ridge.  At various points along the track there are pink plastic triangles nailed to the trees, these indicate where the possum control bait lines start.  A notice at the beginning of the track says "do not follow the pink triangles" but at the top of the ridge where I was, there was a clear track to follow and I knew not to mess with the bait stations so I wandered along the top of the ridge a little way until I got to a little grassy clearing and the first bait station.  By now I had used up my spare ten minutes and decided to head back.  Down to the No. 2 Reservoir (the one that's still there, see a previous post) and then back down the track, across to Spicer Park for a change of scenery and an easy walk back to the car.  It's always a bit of an anti-climax getting back into the car and going away.  The walk did the trick though, I'm not feeling so grumpy any more.  I dropped off some stuff at the recycling station on the way home, which always makes me feel virtuous. No new photos today because I didn't take the camera, but here's one from my last visit to the area; an unexpected concrete artifact near the track, it's obviously something to do with the reservoir and its former purpose of supplying water.

The weather is doing odd things: it's clear and sunny all day, so I decide I will walk in the evening, but just when I think it's cool enough to get energetic, I look up at the sky and see these big clouds rolling in, and maybe it will rain.  This has happened several times in the last few days - it's like being in Auckland. This evening I decided I would walk anyway, even though it's nearly sunset time and those clouds are rolling in.  I went into the Makara Peak park by a different entrance, as I suspected it was an easier climb, and yes it was.  I wish I could take a photo of the birdsong, it was just brilliant.  I don't know if that's because I was later than usual or because I was deeper into the bush, perhaps a bit of both.  Anyway, here's a real cliche of a photo, one of our fabulous tree-ferns against the darkening sky.

New Year, new track

A couple of weeks ago Ray told me about a new track that's been opened, it goes from south Karori up Wright's Hill (which, by the way, according to the map, is actually called Wright Hill, but that just sounds silly.)  I didn't have time for a serious walk today, social butterfly that I am (not!) but I did try out the first 5 minutes worth.  Looks like a nice track: easy walking, good views, and a gentle gradient on the first bit at least.  I was a bit disappointed though to see (and smell) several little piles of doggy-do near the start.  I would recommend solid but "second-best" footwear, solid because of the chunky gravel surface but "second-best" because of the aforementioned little piles.  This track certainly merits further investigation.