Back to square one

It's been over a year since I posted here, and in all that time I've only done a handful of semi-serious walks. This is not good - my fitness has gone downhill badly, and my weight has gone up accordingly. So it's time to bite the bullet and start all over again. I have bought a pedometer, although I'm not sure it's counting my steps correctly, and I still have to find out how long my pace is so it can translate steps into approximately correct distance. My objective for now is go out during the day, every day it doesn't rain, and walk around the block. I've done that twice so far this week.

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..."