Read, Write, Ramble

 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...

Today, no it was yesterday, we caught a taxi from our Kensington Hotel around to Victoria Station, where Wallsy, true to form, bumped into a colleague and his wife from Australia.  We never fail to go away, anywhere in the world without Wallsy seeing someone he knows from the emergency services back home.  The Gatwick Express leaves from Victoria Station, so Sloane Square was a convenient accommodation location to access that particular airport. I’ve never flown out of Gatwick before, although we did pick up a hire car from there once. Airwick Gatport (as a tired Wallsy called it over coffee) is huge. It even has an elevated rail link between terminals.  Once there we navigated our way to the correct terminal, and bought a coffee before saying farewell to Wallsy who is continuing his adventure for a further two weeks. Mark, Julie and I ran the gauntlet of security checks and found our far flung gate lounge, down with the Easy Jet gates - ours was gate 682 (that’s a lot of...

Today was a travel day; one of those long drawn out days that you prepare for with military precision, all the moving parts having to be meticulously timed. Time of leaving the apartment Time of arrival at station. Time of dropping off hire car. Time of getting taxi back to station. Time of departure of train. Time of arrival of train etc.  All the parts meshed together well.  There were flurries of activity (like dropping Julie and I and all the luggage at Truro station), interspersed with lengthy periods of waiting (waiting for Mark & Wallsy to get back from dropping the car; waiting for the train… ).  Then there was the long but interesting train journey to London. We passed through the Cornish countryside, across the Brunel Bridge at Saltash, along the coastline at Dawlish, across the edge of the Salisbury Plain and past the Pewsey white horse carved into the hillside.  For most of this journey the train was standing room only, luggage bays were full before w...

The man in the Cornwall Museum yesterday was adamant that we should not waste our time and money going to Lands End, and I can now see his point. However, there was a Parkrun to be experienced there and that was the draw card.  We were all up early and on the road by 07:30 for the one hour drive from Truro to Lands End. The morning was cool and breezy and spirits were high. We arrived in plenty of time, paid the extortionate parking fee (we didn’t want to buy the car park!) and joined the friendly bunch of parkrunners waiting for the briefing. Held on a gravel cycle path this out and back x2 course had spectacular coastal views which kept distracting me from the task at hand.  We all completed the run successfully with a good mix of walking and jogging and a few good photos caught on the run. Then we went in search of refreshments. The cafe, which we had been told would open at 10, wasn’t. The pub which we were told did parkrun breakfasts, didn’t (at least not that we could fi...