A Life on the Edge: June 2022

Castlepoint Lighthouse with Castlerock in the background

I have decided to resurrect this blog for events shorter events that take place. This one is about a weekend break in Martinborugh during winter.

Our friend Trudy had headed overseas and has kindly offered to lend her house to us and other friends to ensure that it is occupied.

The weekend we had selected was not looking so good with rain predicted for much of the weekend. It was going to be a bit chilly as well. We headed over the Remutakas on Friday, remarkably Wellington was overcast but fine but on getting to the hill road it became a little misty and drizzly. Going down the eastern side the hill was obscured by cloud and mist and it was a surreal feeling of having the road seeming to be likely to lead us over a precipice as we wound our way down the hill. It was very beautiful and gave a different view of the road as it seemed to be the only bit that was not enveloped in the mist.

It was drizzling when we arrived in Martinborough and we anticipated the house being cold but the lovely next door neighbors had turned on the heat pump. We sat and enjoyed our books until it was time to wander down the road to Medici Cafe where we had a lovely meal and couple of glasses of wine. It was a bit chilly but very nice being in the wood smoke tinged air. It really felt like winter.

On Saturday the gloom remained. We drove to Featherston where we visited the local fromagerie C'est Cheese and also got some reasonably priced vegetables from Saturday market. Our next stop was Greytown for a coffee and a bite to eat. While I had another coffee and read my book Bev headed off in search of little shops to browse. It is a nice routine for us both.

I had never been to Castlepoint, a village on the east coast out from Masterton. It is about an 80 kilometre drive through iconic Wairarapa country side, which is hilly and suitable for cattle and sheep. It is hard to believe that before Europeans arrived it would have been largely covered in mature forest.

I have been in Wellington for nineteen years and it is the first time I had been there. Apart from a pub about five kilometres out of the village there is only a store come café with a small resident population and what seems to be a few baches.

It is very beautiful in a raw sort of way. It can be very wild and windy. There is a lighthouse and surf beach. The beach also used to have the Castlepoint races in summer (I am not sure if they have continued). We were lucky that there was very little wind although it was gloomy due to cloud cover. There were afew people around; mostly surfers and a few visitors like us. We climbed the path to the lighthouse and had a wonderful view of the surrounding area. On the seaward side of the little peninisular were cliffs and one brave soul was fishing off the cliff.

We wandered down to the surf beach and saw lots of black clad surfers enjoying what seemed to be a very congested area with rather good surfing waves. How they don't collide with each other really does amaze me.

By the time we left Castlepoint the light was beginning to fade, By the time we got back to Martinborough it was dark and wet. I was cooking our meal so after lighting the fire I got the meal on. Trudy's place heated up really quickly which was nice. While it was cooking we listened to some music enjoying a glass of wine in front of the fire and continued to do so after eating.

We returned to Wellington the following day to see one of a number French films we had booked to see.

It was a lovely weekend despite the weather.

New Plymouth Coastal Cycleway

I had been trying to get to Hamilton to drop off a whole lot of photos for nearly year. Each time I had a plan to do so either work work interfered or a lockdown would interfere.

Now that Omicron was in the community the country was open and the only thing stopping us from doing things was fear of catching it. We decided that Queen's Birthday Weekend was a good one for travelling and that we would travel to Hamilton via New Plymouth (Oakura) leaving on Thursday so that we kept out of the madness of leaving the capital and getting caught in tail back at Otaki.

We left a bit later than intended. It was raining but squeaky windscreen wipers made for a less than pleasant drive. We stopped for lunch at Otaki before driving to Oakura through New Plymouth. It was dark and damp when we arrived but we managed to stay dry getting into our AirBnB accommodation.

After a glass of wine and having heated up the place a bit we went down to the beach to a pizza place we had seen on an earlier visit when we had tried to eat but it was fully booked out. The food and setting was wonderful but the dark of the night meant no nice view of the sea beyond.

The next day we took ourselves down to the beach as the rain held off and in fact there was a little sun around making it very pleasant. Bev is taking a little teddy around where she takes photos of him in the places we visit. Afterwards it was a quick visit to the petrol station for relatively cheap petrol (at least better than some other places) before having a little stop looking along the coastal path for another photo opportunity. The sun remained out making it very pleasant.

The journey took us along the coast, over Mt Messenger (there is tunnel you go through) to Mokau where we stopped briefly to take a photo. It is very rugged and beautiful along that coast. It is probably more than two decades since I traveled that coast.

We called into Piopio to visit the toilets and noted how wet it had been, with flooding still apparent.

Flooding in Piopio

Part of the purpose of the trip was to call in on my 101 year old aunt. We spent a wonderful couple of hours with Ngaere, who despite her fraility, was still sharp and living alone in her house of forty or so years.

We then headed to Hamilton to spend a couple of nights with my sister Lois and her husband John. They were very good hosts and we drank some wine and caught up on what we had been doing over the past few months.

Saturday dawned cold and clear. I was not feeling the best and had been to the doctor before coming up to Hamilton. While there I got a message to say that due to some of the medication I was taking my electrolytes were out of balance so needed to drop the amount I was taking. The consequence of that was that my energy levels were not so good and I was unsure as to how far I could ride. Fortunately for the most part the route was fairly flat although it was no so flat the closer we got to Cambridge at which point, much to Bev's disappointment I said I was unwilling to ride much further.

A glance at the might Waikato

We retraced our steps and then went into the Botanic Gardens which is close to Lois and John's and spent an hour or so exploring a number of the special gardens. There were a couple of new special gardens that had been developed since I lived in Hamilton. It really is a wonderful asset that the city has developed.

The next day we packed up the car and drove to Karangahake Gorge where we planned to do a bike ride along the path that goes from Paeroa to Waihi. The weather was rather chilly (not surprising since it was June) and overcast with a bit of moisture threatening. It is nice easy bike ride and the only glitch was the lack of somewhere decent to eat when we got to Waihi. We found some food but not quite what I wanted.

After we returned to Karangahake, we drove to Pauanui to stay with our friends who have retired there. It rained for much of the time that we were there. We had a little outing in the pouring rain for a coffee then went out for dinner that night. We spent the afternoon watching TV, the film CODA which was on Apple TV. Everyone except me managed to have a nap.

Fortuitously, the next day it had cleared and we had a nice run back to Wellington. We covered quite a bit of ground during the weekend but it was a lot of fun and it was nice traveling again.