We finished our week at our alternative accommodation in Wellington’s Mount Victoria area. We had a great week and were very fortunate to have a great host too – including dotty the cat. Unfortunately the weather was the probably the worst we’ve seen so far with wild winds and torrential rain so that put paid to any fitness plans of running around Mt Vic for us 🙂
We picked up our bikes on Saturday so had a great weekend of weather for cycling around the area. Ciara’s first “training session” was on the road around the bay and beach close to our house, topped off with a great local ice cream.
On Sunday we got a tad more adventurous and cycled along to Sinclair Head and red rocks where the seal colony is. We went quite a bit past there though so had a great afternoon out. I also managed to have a bit of a bouldering session on the way back in the sun. It all felt very civilised and healthy as we never did anything on Friday or Saturday nights apart from watch a film on the tele with our housemates.
The van is getting a bit max’d out now but we’ve managed to get hold of a cycling rack as well – if we keep going we may have to buy a trailer soon! I still have visions of having an inflatable kayak strapped to the roofrack (defalated of course!) for the lakes down south and the bays around here in calm weather but I think I’ll be overrulled on that one, even though you can pick them up from about £180 and the roofrack is just the perfect size. We hope to get out on our friend’s simple kayaks soon if the weather behaves as it’s now officially Spring here! The clocks are forward so we’re now +12hrs from the UK
We’re about to add to our new pastimes soon though as we’ve both booked on a 4 week evening class for surfcasting and rock fishing! Before we know it we’ll be buying a rod and fishing for our dinner from the pier along the road. Well, that’s the plan but I really expect we’ll be buying any fish from the supermarket for some time! I’ve been observing the locals ‘mussell hunting’ (my preferred term) at low tide about 2km from the flat so I’ve got great notions about that as well as I stopped today on my morning cycle and saw three mussells just waiting to be taken home. If we do catch anything it’ll be a bit of a shock as we won’t have a clue what to do with them when we get home.
We’ve also been spying the local beaches and can’t wait until it gets warm enough to be able to swim in the sea (hmmm…wetsuits!), although we may have to learn to swim a bit faster – local fishermen netted a 2.6m great white shark in their nets at Breaker Bay – one of the swimming bays earlier this week! I’m still getting a bit too used to my life of leisure which I may have to change if we stay in Wellington longer but at the moment I like to kid myself this is reality…. here’s some pics from my morning cycles. The bay on the left is Breaker Bay where some folks go surfing (shark fishing anyone?). And yes – that is a warning for motorists about penguins crossing the road. Although we’ve not looked for them apparently they’re quite common around here but they’re quite small I think.
And here’s one of the many styles of houses we’d love when we win the lotto :
