Read, Write, Ramble

There’s one in every group and we’ve already identified the one in our pre-tour tour group! But I am getting ahead of myself. The day was ours to do as we liked, so after breakfast we checked out the new Auckland underground rail loop and the shiny new stations with wide uncluttered concourses and multiple levels of escalators to reach the platforms (3 levels at Karanga-a-Hape!).  We exited each of the three new stations (the red square on the map below) to check out the area, before moving onto the next.  At the first, Te Waihorotiu, we popped out right beside the Civic Theatre where we saw Jesus Christ Superstar last night. After a bit of wandering we found the impressive Town Hall building, the Strand Arcade, and then dropped into a nearby OpShop before returning to the underground and boarding the next train.  We had already visited the Karangahape area, but took a brief walk, and found another OpShop to check out, before re-entering the station and heading for the th...

 Again, I woke 5 minutes before the alarm. I’m not sure why I bother to set one on my phone when my body clock seems to have an inbuilt alarm system. This time it was 05:40 and we needed to be at the bus stop over the road in plenty of time for a 6:45 pick up, because today we were going to Hobbiton.  As someone who had read the Hobbit way back when I was 14 or 15 years old, and watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy when the films were released in the early 2000s, I was excited. As someone who is not familiar with J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, Wallsy was probably less so, but he happily came along for the ride.  The coach collected us right at the appointed time and our Great Sights tour began. We soon had all 40 passengers on board and were heading out of Auckland, the driver assuring us, that despite the forecast rain, the day was going to be fine.  He talked continuously, some of it interesting, much of it neither relevant nor captivating, so much so that Wallsy popped h...

Today we set out, after a good night’s sleep and a buffet breakfast on the 13th floor with beautiful harbour views, with me as the guide. I had armed myself with a suggested 14km walk which would take us along the harbour front, past various points of interest, and through interesting and historic precincts.  The day was cool and overcast, perfect for meandering.  Two hours into the walk we were still in the Maritime Museum, the third point in our 14 point tour. In fact it took us three hours to see the museum which covered Maori watercraft, encounters between Maori and white men arriving on ships from the Northern Hemisphere on missions of exploration and discovery and later trade, through to modern craft, America’s cup bids and other record breaking ventures. It also comprehensively covered lighthouses in New Zealand, developments in reliably determining longitude and latitude and the workings of gps.  After that we needed lunch.    We settled for the museum c...

Even with only 3 hours sleep I was awake 4 minutes before the 04:30 alarm. To say I ‘bounded’ out of bed would be an exaggeration, but I certainly didn’t linger - the Castlemaine Flyer was collecting us in an hour.  Visions of last night’s storm sprang to mind as I raised the bedroom blind and saw the piles of branches and timber in front of number 8, thanks to the work of the SES. I couldn’t make out the extent of the damage to the house in the still-dark morning, but I had seen it last night under the glare of the light towers as the SES unearthed it from beneath the substantial tree. They had worked for three hours. Thankfully it was the front and roof of the garage that had taken the brunt of the tree’s collapse and Mike and Ella were both ok.  A few of us had met out on the street, as we tend to do after an event such as this. We give a shout-out    in the Scott Court WhatsApp chat and then wander out to congregate in the court to debrief and check in on each ot...