Thursday tramp to Waipawa Saddle

14 February
Seventeen Thursday trampers set off to walk up the Waipawa river to the saddle above its source.  To get there we drove to Highway 50 in the Hawkes Bay, then turned off on Wakarara Road and North Block road.  Most of the day was spent in the river which was shallow - only calf deep and the water temperature was pleasant.  There was quite a lot of boulder hopping at times though. Eventually we left the river and climbed up to the saddle, reaching it at 12.45.  Although the weather was fine, a cooling breeze was sweeping down the valley and we had to shelter below the high point for a leisurely lunch and enjoy the views.  Most of us returned back the same way along the river, although some chose to climb up to a DOC track and walk out the higher way.  It was a great day out, but after a 6 1/2 hour tramp we were all ready for a late ice cream stop in Dannevirke on the way home.

Our destination - Waipawa Saddle in the distance

Made it for lunch!

On the saddle looking west further into the Ruahines

View from the saddle looking east over the Hawkes Bay - the way we had walked up

Walking back down - the Waipawa River is just a small stream here

A day in Wellington

Friday 8 February
We spent an enjoyable day in Wellington.  It was sad that this was the last day we would see Brielle at Playcentre. She gave a guided tour of some of her art work. 

Brielle in mid-air!

Isla had just finished day two of her new year at school.  Here she is outside her classroom in an impressive new block just opened at Lyall Bay School

As soon as Isla got home from school she set to work on her building project out the back - a new holiday home

First Thursday tramp for 2013

Our destination was No. 1 Line in the Pohangina Valley.  A DOC track leads in to the hills from the car park at the end of the road.  About 5 minutes walk along the track is a very large, old rimu tree - it is very impressive!  

The big rimu - photo taken on a previous visit

We then walked uphill for about an hour to a seat with a view over the Manawatu.  The maintained track ends here, but 10 of us carried on to explore how far we could get on a roughly cut hunters' track.  It was cut through leatherwood and was difficult going.  By midday we could see across to the Hawkes Bay and decided to stop, have lunch and return to catch up with the other 10 in our group.  We covered 7.7 km in 6 1/2 hours (including stops) which shows just how slow the going was on the hunters' track.

Finding our way - looking east

A welcome sit down on the way out - looking towards Palmerston North with Kapiti Island visible

Mountain biking on Waitangi Day

6 February 

Peter and Lynda organised a group of nine of us to go mountain biking in Santoft forest this holiday morning.  Our mountain bike club has built a wonderful circuit of trails here and we enjoyed about 2 hours of riding, including several stops to re-group and have a chat.

Whangamata

We spent three nights in Whangamata (30 January to 2 February).  We stayed at Dennis and Maree's house.  Much of the time was spent cleaning the caravan and Owen did quite a lot of repairs on the shed replacing some rotten wood and repainting the repairs.  Everything certainly looked much better when we finished.  The punga tree behind the shed had died so Owen cut it down, it was surprisingly heavy to move!  

We did take time out to relax - a couple of good swims, a geocaching bike ride and a trip to the RSA.  Another couple were staying at the house as well and they invited us to come to the RSA on Friday night and make up team for the quiz night with some of their friends.  Well, our team won and we scored a generous tab at the bar!

Caravan and shed - tidied up

A very clever geocache hide - I must have picked this piece of wood up off the sand at least 3 times before I saw the slot hiding the log book!  My camera case to indicate the size.

Our holiday continued south to Pureora forest where we biked some of the new mountain bike "Timber Trail".  We completed a 25km circuit back to the DOC campsite we were staying at. The bird life was wonderful in this superb native forest - lots of kaka noise, but they were hard to see.

Next day we continued on to Taumarunui.  Owen biked from here to Whangamomona on a very hot day - about 80km.  We camped at Whangamonona overnight.  Alas the fine weather ended and the rain arrived first thing in the morning.  We decided to drive home, but stopped on the way at the Tawhiti museum near Hawera.  We highly recommend visiting this museum, it's full of models, both miniature and life size.  Lots of interesting history, often done with a sense of humour.  Also a boat ride through the times of "Traders and Whalers".  We spent 3 hours there! 

Falcons

Some highlights of our drive north were:

• Camping at Wairakei Natural Thermal Valley.  The AA guide described it as "rustic" and it was - with hens and even a pig strolling around the grounds.  Very friendly owners and the facilities were a bit ancient but quite OK.
• Mountain biking at Craters of the Moon (Taupo)
• Mountain biking at Whakarewarewa forest (Rotorua)
• Visiting the Birds of Prey Centre near Rotorua where we visited the aviaries and watched a live falcon show.  The falcons were allowed to fly freely, they would come back to catch meat being swung from a string. It was an excellent show - highly recommended!

Te Maari craters

 28 January -  We set off on a short driving holiday, heading north.  

It was a beautiful fine day and as we crossed the Desert Rooad we noticed that steam was visible from the Te Maari craters on Mt Tongariro.  We decided to take a detour to get a closer look and take some photos.  We were quite amazed how active these craters are.

Andrea and Aria in Palmerston North

It was very special having Andrea and Aria staying with us from 24-27 January.  A few photos from their stay.

Tomoko kindly acted as a human gymnasium

Sprint the Bay - Hawkes Bay

Sprint the Bay - 15-17 January

After the finish of the seven events in the Oceania Carnival many of us orienteers spent another three days competing in sprint races in the Hawkes Bay.  There were two short races each day, one in the morning and another at about 6 pm in the evening.  The sprints were in all sorts of interesting places, including complex school buildings like Woodford House, Havelock North, and street events in Napier Central and Havelock North.  Two events were out in the countryside, one in river gravels in the Tukituki river valley with complex patches of gorse, another in farmland with intricate pointy hills caused by a historic slip.  The highlight though was the event in Splash Planet in Hastings where we had to navigate our way through playground equipment, cross pools, and go through tunnels - it was very tricky but a lot of fun.

Fraser starting his run at Woodford House

Royce at the spectator control - Splash Planet

Owen and I stayed in a rental house at Haumoana Beach.  It was right on the beach and has been in the news because of the risk of coastal erosion.  The owner has piled up huge concrete blocks to protect the house, but we think the waves will win eventually.  As you can see we were very close to the water and had great views from Cape Kidnappers to Napier.

I plugged a waypoint into our Garmin Nuvi in-car GPS so that we could easily navigate back to our house.  I named the waypoint "Haumoana House", but the British lady's voice struggled with the name and her pronunciation sounded more like "hormonal house".  Probably true to an extent because there were five women (all orienteers) staying in the house, Owen was the only male.

The view from Haumoana house

              Owen spent some time photographing the birds in the nearby estuaries.

Swans in flight

Osgiliath Wood - the finish

The last control for most runners

The run to the finish - soft sand!

Enjoying some Manawatu sunshine

Fraser after a long, hard run in forest and sand dunes

Intense interest in the electronic results

Osgiliath Wood - more photos

At the start line for juniors

A control out in the sand dunes

A runner out on the sand dunes

Osgiliath Wood

Saturday 5 January - Day 2 of Oceania Orienteering Carnival

Royce was controller for this event, which meant months of work leading up to the day. "My main role was to check over the 14 different courses we were providing ranging from elite runners to children aged 10 and under.  Each control site was visited and checked several times".  The map was called Osgiliath Wood because scenes for The Lord of the Rings (2001) were filmed in this forest - especially amongst some gnarly old pine trees.  There were 690 entries for this event, many from the northern hemisphere and a lot of Australians too.  The weather was beautiful - fine and warm.  Thankfully, the day went very smoothly and there were lots of favourable comments from runners who enjoyed their courses in this world class forest.  "This was thanks to a huge team of hard workers of which I was just one".   

The event centre at a fire-fighting pond.  The shade was appreciated.

The coffee cart - essential!

The big screen