A Busy Day of Sightseeing

 This morning when we got up the sun looked so inviting that we decided we just had to go somewhere, anywhere really so long as it wasn't too far away and there was something to see. So we picked Ludlow, totally randomly, just cos it has a castle.

We are of course far too stingy to pay to go into the castle and even too stingy to pay for parking. We parked at the bottom of the hill and walked over the bridge and up the hill to get into the town. There are great views of the castle from the bottom of the hill though so we might be cheapskates but we know where to get a good view for free!

As it turned out it was market day in Ludlow which made for a good mooch. There are lots of nice stalls there and although I was tempted by quite a few things (fresh herbs and books mostly) I didn't actually buy anything. Dad didn't spend up large either but did buy a rubber cap for the base of his walking stick that he uses sometimes. He lost his previous one by testing the depth of a mud hole, he found out how deep it was but sacrificed the rubber base to the suction of the mud XD 

We bought lunch at the local shops and went up an awesome (and free) viewpoint on the edge of town to eat and enjoy the view. The sun was gorgeous when it was out and it would have been tshirt weather if not for the clouds scudding past. We weren't complaining too much though, the view was good and the food was excellent. I managed  to eat the entire cob loaf pretty much by myself, which perhaps wasn't wise but I don't care haha It was bloody good. 

After our meagre lunch ;p we moved on to Stokesay Castle which we did go into and even paid for the parking! We are members of New Zealand Heritage so we got into the castle for free and the parking was only a quid for the rest of the day so figured we could suffer it. Stokesay is a beautiful place and although we have been there many times before I still really enjoy it. I always feel like a character in a period drama when I'm there as it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see how the rooms were used. 

The great hall gets me everytime. I can just see the great long tables loaded down with plates of bread and cheese and a whole hog in the middle of the centre table, beer flowing, straw on the floor and dogs squabbling over the scraps while the lady of the house watches from the balcony before making a regal entry down the ancient stairs in her flowing gown. I should write books not blogs haha 
Stokesay just screams history and I could probably blah on at you all day about lord so and so and mistress whats her name but I didn't bother with the audio tour because I like to make up my own version most of the time. I like to know the general history of a place, how it was used and how things worked but when it comes to names and lineage and politics my interest tends to fade off.

After Stokesay we figured we might as well overload on old ruined buildings so stopped off at Wenlock Priory for a whistle stop tour. Again we skipped the audio tour so if you want the dates times and peoples names I'm afraid I will have to urge to ask google. As for my interest, as ever, I want to climb things!  wanted to get to those second storey corridors that I could see but alas, with other people around and a dash of better judgement, I kept my feet on the ground.

 With the sun still up and a tempting road sign promising places called Homer and Wig Wig, we took a little detour and found this old church. It was sat on top of a hill in a little village with this perculiar black and white gallery attached to it that caught our attention. We had a look around and had a bit of a mooch inside. It was nice as churches go. Small and empty XD Strangely enough we didn't find Wig Wig or Homer. An aim for another day perhaps. 
So that was our busy day, with multiple tourist attractions loaded into one day. I'll leave you with one last image for you to think about, something that gave us pause in the church grounds.

See you next time! 
 

Er, So I Moved Country...

Hi guys! How's it going? Long time no see right... Yeah I kinda slipped off the face of the earth for awhile there, quite literally really since now that I've landed I'm on the other side of the world in England! No more NZ for awhile, I'm back in the mother land! Although I should call it the father land since this is where my father was born and my mother comes from NZ... Anyway

It's spring over here and today was a beauty day. Me and Dad spent the afternoon in Bridgnorth which is a lovey two tier town. No matter how many times I go there I always find something interesting to look at. Today it was steam trains at the severn valley railway station.

We spent some time sitting on the platform watching the comings and goings and enjoying the sun. It was warm enough to actually take our jumpers off which is quite a feat for England in early april. So we made the most of it and lounged until the clouds came over.

After the station we went for a walk up the hill and saw a gorgeous retriever who was very intent on something that it could see but well behaved enough to just stand and stare. It took me a minute to twig what it was so keen on but when I worked it out I cracked up.

 

Cheeky cat knew it was out of reach! We carried on towards the shops where we saw a great sign in a window, good humour on the shopkeepers part and pretty true too.

We were very lucky with the weather today as for most of the time that we were walking around it was sunny or at least patchy sun but on the horizon we could see dark storm clouds gathering. I was very glad to be where we were rather than under those threatening clouds.

Bridgnorth is such a historic town, and such a touristy town, that it's hard not to learn something new while you're there. Today I learnt that the steps leading to high town are so shallow as they were designed for donkeys! Apparently there was only one road wide enough to allow passage to wheeled vehicles so most goods had to be brought up the hill on the backs of donkeys. So they made a set of shallow steps that wouldn't trip them up.

So there you have it. A day trip in Bridgnorth sort of, more like a lazy afternoon but that still counts. Here's hoping I can get back into the blog a bit more in the next few months and keep you updated on my adventures around jolly old England. As a parting pic, have another steam train.

 

 

Photography Fun

Today was unusual for me, a theme this weekend that I feel I've really needed. Today I went to my first bloggers brunch club and I was pretty nervous before I left but everyone made me feel really welcome. I was very impressed, the other girls seem so much more accomplished than me, working with suppliers and businesses while I'm just over here writing to myself. It was nice to hear their views though and to hear that blogging doesn't have to take over your life and small is nothing to be ashamed of. We all start just for the love of it and I don't need mine to pay the bills so I'm happy to let it roll along quietly. I got so wrapped up in listening and talking that I forgot to ask for their blog details and instagram names! Duh! Oh well I guess I will just have to go to the next brunch and ask then.

 After brunch club I decided to take the long way home as the sun was shining and I wanted to take photos. I had seen a road sign on the way down pointing to a town that I couldn't remember visiting so I decided to travel back via that way. As it turns out the town wasn't really a town at all but about 6 building around a round about which I guess is why I can't remember visiting it before.

Next stop was Marton where I found a cute park that I've never seen before. It didn't look it's best really but you can just tell that it would be beautiful in the spring and summer so I plan to go back when the leaves return.

There were loads of ducks on the pond but there was a trio that really caught my eye because they had funky hair do's like this guy! They started off on the pond as they were a bit nervous but once I crouched down to take photo's of other things they got a bit cheeky and came up on the bank to see if I had any bread hiding in my pockets. Unfortunately I didn't but I will try to remember to take some when I go back.

On my way out of town I saw this nice church and played about with the sun behind the cross. It didn't come out quite how I planned but I still like it.

I headed home and picked up Mum and convinced her to come out to Kai Iwi beach with me as neither of us had been out there since the floods. We knew the bridge was broken but it was still a bit of a shock to actually see it first hand. I of course had to test it out and walked over the broken bits to stand on the end.

There was a lot of rain last night so the rivers where all running dirty and have made the sea a strangely appealing muddy colour. You wouldn't catch me swimming in it but it was interesting to watch.
I'll leave you with one final photo of a shell that was on the beach. It caught my eye because of the strange worm like patterns on it.

Mother's Day

Mother's day this year was a bit different for me mostly because my Dad was here too. Usually I take Mum out for a meal, cook something or I buy her a bunch of little gifts so that it's like a mini christmas. This year though I decided that we should go away for the weekend, Dad included, to Taupo which is known for it's thermal waters.

Taupo is only about 2-3 hours away from where we live, depending on fast you drive and how many stops you make so we set aside the whole day to get there knowing that we could do the tourist things along the way. Our first stop was actually on the side of the road where there was some driftwood art in the shape of a kiwi which I thought was not only amazing in it's own right but also well placed because along the way there were road signs warning about kiwis. We passed the main mountains of the north island on the way and although Ruapehu didn't have a lot of snow it still looked lovely. For those of you who don't know, Mount Ruapehu is actually used as the filming location for Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings. 

 

Our first main stop though was a little thermal town half way to Taupo where we stopped to have a bathe in a thermal pool. We also had a look around their thermal forest (which was free) where there are natural hot pools and bubbling mud areas. Me and Dad couldn't resist hopping the fence for a better look even though there are danger signs. We will get caught out one day but until then we will keep bending the rules. The water was so hot there that the local people use it for cooking, they put baskets of food into the water to boil or build wooden platforms over the vents to steam. I would have loved to give it a try but we didn't have any food with us that could be cooked!  

 

On the way past Lake Taupo, which is the largest lake in New Zealand, I managed to get stuck behind some slow traffic so I pulled into on of the rest areas and it just happened to have a family of black swans and an awesome crop of mushrooms.

The main highlight of the trip was the Wai-O-Tapu thermal area which we stumbled across while looking for another thermal swimming pool which we knew was somewhere on the outskirts of Taupo. Along the Wai-O-Tapu road was the most amazing boiling mud lake I've seen and I took so many pics and videos of it that I have more than I know what to do with. Unfortunately out of the 200nodd pics I took only about 4 are decent and even then they aren't anywhere near as impressive as the actual thing. Mostly I think the noise is the most fascinating and with out that it really is just mud!

Further along the road we saw a sign for a geyser but when we got to the end of the road it turned out that you had to pay to go in to see and being the cheap skates that we are we didn't want to pay, especially because we had been told they put chemicals into the geyser to make it perform at certain times of day which didn't seem right to us. There's no point going to see a natural wonder if it's not natural after all. Feeling a bit disappointed we carried on down the road until we saw some more steam and pulled over to have a look. Turns out we had found a thermal stream where the temperature was low enough to bathe. It was a balmy 38c we reckon which was lovely and hot but not burning. After a hasty road side change into our bathing suits we got into the water and really enjoyed the atmosphere and the fact that once again we had found something so amazing for free! The pools that we had been aiming for would have cost us $15 each and are usually quite busy. Bathing in the stream was not only nicer on our pockets it felt far more special knowing that the water was pure thermal, no temperature control or ph checks, no infrastructure, just the trees and the bird song. It was truly magical. 

 

After our bathe and slightly awkward change back into clothes between the doors of the car we decided to go and have another look at the geyser area. This time when we got there the gates were open so we wandered down and had a look at what all the fuss was about. It was actually amazing in it's natural state and although it wasn't consistent it was still rather impressive which made us wonder if they really needed to put chemicals in to impress the tourists. Again we took far too many photos and even played the camera settings to get a group shot of us. We had the place to ourselves as the sign had been removed from the end of the road which made us feel dodgy about the company that runs the area, almost like they didn't want people to know it was there unless you were going to the paid show. They had a whole area fenced further down the road that you could pay to go into but it cost $32 a person and from the look of the brochure had nothing more amazing that what we had already seen for free, so needless to say we didn't go into the complex.

It was an amazing weekend in so many ways and the fact that we managed to do so much without destroying our wallets really made it all the better!

When One Adventure Ends, Another Begins

After two months together I am at a bit of loss now that Dad has returned home to England. Isn't it funny how quickly a big change can become normal in our lives. After all, his arrival was quite an upheaval in the normality of routine here. Work was shuffled, our diet changed, our pets got extra attention and of course me and Dad travelled about 6,000kms in my poor beat up old car! I'm sure that soon enough the big change of him leaving will become normal too and my routine will drop back into place but for now it's all a bit odd.

We dropped him off at the airport super early on Friday morning and, as ever, when presented with an emotionally charged scenario I kinda wandered off into my brain to distract myself. For example check out the control tower. It's a face right? That's not just me trying really hard to find something else to think about is it? Well maybe...

Once we got home I kinda threw myself into doing stuff to keep busy. I sorted out Dads room, got the washing on and then started loading books onto the shelves that Dad had built for us. I'm hoping to have these full pretty soon along with the rest of my shelves. These bad boys are the start of my home library and will soon have the company of a few more shelves hopefully.

Rush is going to miss Dad too because everytime he showed up it meant that it was walking time! Over the next few entries I'll tell you some of the tales of the things we got up while Dad was here as well as writing about what I'm getting up to in my day to day life now that things are going back to 'normal'

Taranaki Touring. Part 2

Day two of our adventure away started with a somewhat unplanned walk. We had decided to check out a lake that was on the way to where we were heading that day. When we got there we found out it was a fully fenced reserve with double electric gates and huge pest proof fences, I forgot to take photos but it was pretty surreal having to drive through.
Once we were in we had a mooch at the info boards and then decided to go for a 10 minute walk along the lake trail but once we started we figured we may as well carry on and it took us an hour to complete the circuit. It was a nice walk through native bush with plenty of bird song and the sound of ducks on the water. There were no mammals to see though as New Zealand has no native land based animals.

Being so close to the mountain meant that we had to go check it out, unfortunately the weather wasn't the best so I couldn't get any great pictures but it was still a nice drive. We drove up to one of the car parks and then took a short 20 minute walk to Dawson Falls which was very pretty and we met a nice family at the base who took our pictures for us and we returned the favour. I still get surprised about how friendly New Zealand people are sometimes.

To finish off the day we did a tour around the coastline, the highlight of which was seeing the Cape Egmont lighthouse.

The next day we went into the town of New Plymouth for a look around. The first place we explored was Pukekura park which has lots of pretty pathways with visual features such as a nice bridge, a little waterfall and large old trees. We walked the length of the park until we got to the little free zoo that they have. It's mostly farm animals but I'm always happy with that. They also had some exotic birds, meercats, otters and monkeys. We took a walk along the coastal pathway as well although we didn't really enjoy it as there was a lot of bike traffic but none of them had bells so it felt like we were constantly watching our backs trying not to get run over by bikes. It was pleasant scenery though and on the way back we stumbled across a Truck gathering. It was pretty cool, I've never seen so many big rigs all in one place. I think the best one though was a child size one that the kids could climb into the trailer of to get a ride around the fair. Very cute

When we got back to the farm that night we fed all the animals and then took the quad out for a ride. We followed the tracks for quite a long way and found a whole heap of mushrooms on the way. It was all quite exciting in a novel kind of way since neither of us had been on a quad for awhile and I always love collecting mushrooms.

Taranaki Touring. Part 1

I apologise if it seems like I wandered off for awhile because, well, I did...
The interesting thing about being a house sitter is that you never really know when the jobs will come in. Sometimes I seem to get multiple requests just when it's highly inconvenient  and other times the requests arrive just when I'm waiting a break and are really quite welcome. They can be a blessing or a burden depending on the circumstances. The last job I did was a real blessing, my cousin wanted me to look after her farm while her and her family went away. She lives in a rural area about 2 hours drive from where I live and about 1 hour away from New Plymouth which is a town that I was planning to explore with Dad.
The entire area around where she lives is very scenic so it was really a gift for me and Dad to be able to stay there and have not only free accommodation but get paid to stay. We did of course have to look after her animals which included a house dog (an elderly terrier), 3 chickens, 2 pigs, a cat and 8 farm dogs which may sound a lot but only took an hour or so to care for morning and night.

I'm getting a bit ahead of myself though. On the Thursday we traveled up in a very leisurely manner. We were taking the coast road so we stopped at all the beaches along the way and found things of interest at every one. At the first beach we stopped at there is a bit of a camp ground and some of the people who were staying there had apparently had a party on the beach the night before. They had set up a wind break and benches out of drift wood and had themselves a large bonfire. When we arrived the ashes were still warm so being the pyromaniacs that we are we wanted to see if we could get it going again. I found some beach tumble weeds ( I have no idea of the proper name, they are some sort of seed from the sea grasses I think and when its windy they roll along the beach like mini tumbleweeds. Turns out they make good tinder) and Dad got some small sticks which we stacked onto the warm ashes and then we wandered off along the beach. On our way back we saw someone else adding sticks to the fire before scuttling off down the beach so we reclaimed our space and built up the flames until we had some big logs on there. The people we had seen adding sticks then came back to join us and had a chat with us while they enjoyed the heat from our fire. It was all very impromptu but that always makes the best memories.
 

The next stop along the way was a beach which I knew sometimes had seals and I was really hoping there would be one there. I was in luck! I always forget how much they smell though, like some sort of mix between old wet dog and stinky fish and ocean. The one we saw was alone and somewhat nervous so although we got close enough to take pictures it wasn't too keen on us being around and headed down the cliff and out to sea not long after we had moved away.

 Up next was a beach that had a super cool old sea wall that we just had to walk along even if the tide was coming in and making it look a little dodgy. It was perfectly fine of course and we didn't even get splashed by the waves. There was also a ship wreck washed up on the beach that we had a mooch around and through. A few years ago when my sister visited we went to the same ship wreck and as she stood in front of it for me to take a photo a huge wave came over and splashed her! It was hilarious at the time and so we couldn't resist going over to it to take photos again but we did make sure the waves were breaking further out first.

The final beach on our tour had lots of rocks which made a great rock hopping course. Even at 71 Dad is still a keen rock hopper and he even made it to the ocean edge before me. Although I did get a little distracted looking in the rock pools for awhile. I didn't see much life except a few little quick darting fish but I did find a rubber end to a milking machine which will make a good dog toy.

Well that's pretty much it for our first day of traveling. From the last beach we headed straight on to my cousins farm, arriving about 5pm and the family at about 6pm after showing me around and telling what needed doing while they were away. We settled our selves in and since it had been a long day we turned in early to prepare for the next day of adventure.
Look out for part two which I'll be posting soon.