Rugged West Coast at Raglan

My little sister took this beautiful picture. I am envious.

She is a talented photographer with a special eye for landscapes but also catching funny situations just at the right moment with family and on the farm. So I will need to show one of those soon as well.

 

The Boys

Lewi with picnic (Thanks Nana). Lewi is a picnic expert and makes a lot of rules for his guests along the way.

Lewi, The Monster, Jay and Pop watching some mind numbing kids show...

We tried to give this big plant away but we had zero interest. So Jay and I decided it had to come down. Now we just have the base (200kgs I reckon) and the pot to attack next.

Jay was on the rope

Yes!

 

Gentle Annie

This is one of new Zealand top 10 roads. It was on my to do list for the holidays.

In a nutshell, fantastic.

Fully tar sealed now beautiful quiet and very drivable. The landscape goes heads up high flatlands (1000m) with amazing green pastures surrounded by very rugged country. The Rangitiki river runs through.

In over 150km we counted only 20 vehicles and some of them were road workers. Funnily I found it difficult to find safe placed to pull off and take pictures. Two of the ones below are not mine.

Up on the tops where the green pasture dominated the landscape you could see black Angus cattle for many kilometres.

We drove from the Taihapi side towards Hawkes Bay.

History Link

 

Last Week

Went to the Redwoods on my eBike. Crashed and made myself a new knee among other things

Silly old bugger

My new knee! A week later and its still killing me...

Having a light dinner in our motel in Napier and tipped the stupidly designed table over and wore my sandwich and gin. Then of course the big clean up.

Highlight of last week was Robs birthday. Here he is with his boys Jay and Lewi

 

Last Day Or Two

We rock hopped all the way to the top pool at McLaren Park. Beautiful up there.

Did some bush bashing on the way back down

Nothing like imagination. Jay was very happy with our made 'on the spot' fishing rod with a small rock for bait.

NZ semi finals of beach hockey held at Mt Maunganui. Over 30,000 people came to look over the day.

A starting fact was that the sand surface temperature was over 76deg C

Dragon Bar

 

Matua To Omokoroa Cycle

 We tried the new cycleway. A 50k round trip from home. Its well worth it. Most people seem to start from the Wairoa bridge but we left from home. Some amazing sights and homes to be seen along the way. We had breakfast on the way. One of the homes are shown below and also I put a link to more details.

Link

Nothing To See Here

China

All sorted (A good Tui beer ad)

Meanwhile in USA 

Sunrise Tauranga Harbour

 

Holiday Time

 So things started badly when 20,000 of my pictures became lost in computer heaven when my storage devise turned into a brick! I have a component coming from the States which hopefully will sort the problem out. Meanwhile resorting to a few phone pics.

Jay and I spent some time down by the rail bridge here in Tauranga which is an old part of town. Then it was time for coffee and a run in the park.

UK Covid

Daily rates at over 60k

Over 1 million people have it there currently.

Frankly don't know why we don't shut the boarder totally for a month or so. It may be too late now anyway as New Zealanders bale out of the UK for home. I think they left it a bit late.

 Global Data in this link

From The Black & White Days

Tuna Seiner bow

Paint making blade. High Speed Disperser 

Sunday race, Tauranga Harbour 1980s

Fisherman wharf Tauranga

Its obvious

A cozy corner of lake Rotoiti

 

Fun

Going crazy with the lumi sticks

Cool effects

New Years eve at Fergy park. A great show.

Jays drawings 

This was a drawing of Jays we decided to turn into a project. So off to Spotlight to buy the bits and bobs to make it. This was New Years day.

The finished 'Monster'