Things that go ‘scratch, bump and creak’ in the night

As usual not knowing where we were heading, off we went stopping at Otaki, the centre of NZ factory outlets and finally indulged in my merino craving – nice long sleeved top, not too thick, fab colour and only £25!! We’d stopped in the i-site to ask about some walks B had seen in the Rough Guide, the lady was busy, but the guy “just there to fix the computer” thought he could help! He did and off we set to Otaki forks.

Got to the DoC campsite at the end, couldn’t actually work out where the walk we wanted to do went, so blundered off up the river, we were determined to actually see water this time, not just walk through trees near water! We had a really good time, never quite hitting our target, a loghauler (whatever that is) but we had a lovely walk up stream, veering off up to a creek having to do numerous crossings involving stepping stones, paddling, B trying to make some stepping stones for me, but getting onto too stretched a position, so me paddling and rescuing him once I’d stopped laughing! 

Preparing to get 'feet wet'

He finally saw some orange flags, we must be there, I tried pointing out they were on the left not the right as the map had said, but undeterred we followed them perhaps 20’ through the bush, back to the creek, but having bypassed a tricky bit of river! I decided we’d gone far enough at this point so we headed back having had a really good time just stopping off close to camp for a quick bath. Well quick for me, as it was jolly cold, slightly longer for B who had just stripped off (I’d sensibly put my bikini on before we’d left the van) as an older couple walked down to the river, looked around, wandered back stopping to pick blackberries, all the while B determined not to offend their sensibilities remained sitting in the water!

Mmmmm, which way now?

I think, this way....

Our campsite

Yummy dinner of spicy seafood linguine (it’s amazing what you can create with the right ingredients in a tiny van) chilled sauvignon blanc and retired for the night. Very dark, off to sleep, lovely, till we woke just before 0200 with something chewing the roof - well that's what I think! I think it sounded like the kea did when they were on the roof, B's not so sure, eventually we dashed out, could see nothing, dozed off a bit kept hearing the odd noise, I eventually climbed into the drivers seat so I could open the door and get as close to the roof as possible, could see nothing, and then at 0600 sounded like it was under the van, so again, threw open the back door, could still see nothing! So we have no idea what it was, there aren’t many nocturnal birds (except kiwi and I can’t see one of them having made it onto the roof), we could hear a morepork owl in the distance, so rat or possum? I threw an apple out to see if it would eat that and leave us alone, but didn't touch it! So very odd night, not scary, except you don’t want the van damaged, but we’ll never know!

Bailey telling me about the ceremonial gown and the handbag made of Pukeko feathers

Left there heading slowly north towards Wanganui, stopping in the seaside town of Foxton, in theory to look at the Dutch windmill which the rough guide said at the time of going to print was going to start strapping people to the sails and whirling them round! Saw no sign of that, decided I knew a bit about windmills and drifted into an ‘exhibition’ It was the most interesting, personal, low key education you can imagine. 

The waterproof coat

Bailey, a maori woman was an absolute hoot, but was so interesting, told us all about flax (which she weaves as her ‘job’)how it’s prepared for use as everything from clothing to fishing line, and then moved on to weapons, how the kids if being attacked knew to spike through the walls with serrated hardened flax stems, how stingray stings were used, once in the only way out is to go all the way through, how earrings made of paua or greenstone could be rammed up the nose of an attacker….. Well worth the nothing we paid and the 45 minutes we spent.

One of many amusing street signs in Bulls

Further up the coast we reached the town of Bulls which has a bit of a running joke going on – the police station is labelled ‘Const –a-bulls, the clothes shop, fashion-a-bull and so it went on. The only people who really could have made more effort was Mobil! Shame.

Wanganui High Street

We arrived in plenty of time to look round Wanganui, a very pretty town with a museum and gallery we intend to visit, whether we go the whole hog and go to the cinema we have yet to decide. We arrived at the house, met Hilary and Brinny and an hour later she was gone! He's a cute cat, a tabby, of normal dimensions, she seemed impressed I'd had a lick even before she went, but then she is the evil one who does nasty things and Stuart gets away with being the good guy! 

Wanganui Art Gallery

Brinny is only allowed into the laundry and bathroom, but comes and goes at will, we think he'd quite like to come into the rest of the house, but we will be good! (the risk of him weeing on the new carpet or sofa, which he’s done before is too great!)

Brinny

We have put the green chairs on the patio though and had pudding out there, and sat there a bit this morning, and he's been really quite attentive! I put him on my knee yesterday to watch B water the garden, and he seemed quite happy - dribbled, but he does that, that and a lot of licking - B's leg mostly!

So the first lot of washing is out, and second lot is in. There are lots of veges in the garden we can help ourselves to, so I might try cooking beetroot later. Squash yesterday, but we bought that! Roasted it with the potatoes and very nice it was too as we had roast chicken, roast pots and 5 veg! Followed by the last portion of apple crumble. Never fear though – there is a lot of rhubarb also growing so we should be covered on the crumble front too!

It’s an entirely different house to John's looks much bigger than his though I'm not sure it really is, has only one bedroom, but  they both have a study, so that’s where we are, but it has the squeakiest bed imaginable - snoring makes it squeak, it was still squeaking after B left to go to the loo! We'll look at it in a bit, but I'm wondering about sleeping in the van! 

Relaxing on the patio

Has huge high ceilings and is obviously quite old, and really needs some attention! It is their retirement home, so when that will happen who knows. She is probably older than B, but is still working in Wellington as a software something or other, only home on the w/ends but does loads of swimming, running, even triathalons as the medals above my head, on the curtain rail attribute. She's away swimming next w/end hence her need for us. It's odd being in a street with neighbours, next doors dog barks a lot, but I think we’ll be very comfortable and relaxed here.

Manawatu Gorge plus wellie wanging!

When we say ‘wellie wanging’ we mean gumboot throwing (wellie being what we call them in the UK!). Taihape promotes itself as NZ gumboot capital, marks it with a giant corrugated iron sculpture of a gumboot at the entrance to the town and holds gumboot throwing competitions once a year on their Gumboot Day, which happens to be this Saturday 9^th March. Although we’ve left Taihape now we won’t be too far away to return if either of us are any good at it. To find out, it’s possible to borrow a ‘competition standard’ wellie in the nearby i-site, read the rules of throwing and take yourself off to the wellie throwing area, which is a high fenced off area next to the station and railway line.

I’m usually not very good at this sort of thing (I was crap at cricket at school), so waited until the coachload of visitors had had a go and left and then had a go. My first go cleared the high fence and landed on the platform next to the railway line! Scrabbling up the bank to the platform to retrieve it a railway official walking by suggested he would close off the line while I practiced if I would like (how embarrassing!). Anyway my next goes were at least inside the fences (just) but nowhere near far enough. Jackie had a go and although hers were at least in the right direction she was well short of me! We decided not to bother returning on Saturday!

Instead we went to Ashhurst and the Manawatu Gorge, where a river, railway and road cut through a narrow gorge together. Jackie also found (from the internet) a small area of climbing in the gorge as well, but this turned out to be a small crag below the road, straight up from the river. We checked it out by pulling into a layby, climbing over the crash barrier and scrambling down (very steep over long grass, straight towards the river!). 

The rope traverese

A couple of thin steps onto some rocks led to a rope anchored to the wall, allowing us to move over to where the climbing was. There were about 6 bolted routes from fairly easy to quite hard, but they all looked as though they hadn’t been climbed in a long time, covered in lichen and weeds. They went straight up to road level, belaying either on some top anchors, or directly from the road crash barriers. As it was fairly late, we decided we would return the next day and drove to the other end of the gorge to look at another area, which turned out to be very similar, but a lot harder (the river was very deep, so if you fell off you’d just get wet – deep water soloing!). We’d also read about a 10km walk through the gorge, which I quite fancied doing so we went into nearby Woodville to ask at the i-site. The very nice lady (called Tricia) told us about it and offered us the services of her partner, Rob, who would drive us to one end, allowing us to do a linear walk back to our van. We could do the walk in the morning and climb in the afternoon we thought.

View down into the gorge from one of the lookouts

Jackie takes up from here: We did a gorge walk today which sounded better than it was, we could have been anywhere, in trees, didn't see the river except for brief glimpses, there was even a lookout which appeared to be somewhere entirely different, no sign of the gorge at all! There was a good look out from the top of the earth slip that had closed the gorge for 18 months, it's only been open again 6 wks ish. We gathered this from the bloke (Rob) who picked us up in his van to take us to the other end, so we could do a linear walk. He obviously felt a bit guilty charging us $10 each for 7km through the gorge, so asked us if we'd been up to the wind farm, which is big and was the first in NZ. 

View from the top of the landslip that closed the road for 18 months

We hadn't, so he took us, and interesting it was too, over 'the saddle' well almost, as he ran out of diesel! Rang Trish, his partner/business partner, depending on whether she said it or he said it, who we'd met in the i-site the previous day and got the number from, she didn't know the number of 'Ivan' either, so he had to ring directory enquiries, got 'Ivan's' number, and rang him begging a favour.... he was very quick to respond arrived with a little can and off we went. He decided to fill up first in Woodville, well we weren't going to argue, but then he drove into the gorge and forgot to drop us off! This is a new fledgeling tour business he's started. Don't think he's going to do too well! 

A picturesque bit of the walk

It’s a shame, he was a nice guy (trying to get a business off the ground in his late 60’s), but he hasn’t quite got it together! We wouldn’t have missed it for the world though, Ivan arrived with a big smile on his face and, afterwards we told Rob this will be brought up at all future dinner parties they have together! As the walk took us just over 3 hours and we were rather late in starting (due to Rob), we decided not to go climbing.

A Weta Jackie spotted outside our van (it was very dark at the time)

We spent last night just at the park in Ashhurst, next to the cemetry, which was fine, cheap, with power but no kitchen, so had to cook in the van, went out for a quick walk after dinner and, on returning to the van found two ladies trying to census us, so we are officially recorded on the 2013 census! They do a census every 5 years in NZ they told us, the last one was due in February 2011, just as the Christchurch earthquake hit, so it was abandoned until now.

Today we planned to go back to the gorge and do the climbs and then drive up through Pohangina river valley, possibly doing some short walks there. Trisha in the i-site in Woodville said ‘if you do nothing else at least drive through it, it’s lovely’. We crossed the climbing off the list when clouds rolled in and it started to drizzle (not sufficient to end the drought though), so we decided on the drive only. It was quite pretty, but nothing special, so we did the circuit she suggested then drove into Palmerston North city to have a look round. John Cleese had visited this place some years ago and apparently remarked ‘if you want to kill yourself but lack the courage, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick!’ The town responded by naming a local rubbish dump after him.

What do you think of this picture? I call it 'art'!

The city was OK, a bit harsh of John Cleese we thought, but it also wasn’t anything to rave about. Lots of gear shops and we could have spent loads of money in the Kathmandu store, who were having a sale, but resisted! Now we’re in Levin, further to the South West and in a great little campsite. The owners, who have 2 children and a third on the way, have bought it as a lifestyle choice and its spick and span! We like it here, but don’t think we can stay another night as it’s now Thursday and we need to be in Wanganui on Sunday for our housesitting assignment!