Travels in New Zealand and beyond, going back to 2003!
Father’s Day, celebrated on the first Sunday of September in New Zealand (and Australia), was this year spent with a mix of action and creativity. Two of our three daughters were keen to get their Daddy out for some action and took him to the local recreation centre for an hour or two of roller-blading!…
Everyone is well in the family again and all the girls have been back at school for a good week and a half. It was brilliant to get some sunshine this weekend to really keep those feel good vibes swinging! We headed out to Worser Bay to take our puppy for an off lead gallop on…
For the third week, in a row, I’ve had at least one of my three daughters home poorly from school. They have been hit hard by some flu type virus, that is doing the rounds across the country this winter. They are all slowly on the mend, though still not at full energy. In the…
This was the scene into the second kilometre of the half marathon I ran on Sunday morning – The 5 Bridges Half Marathon, organised by Capital Multisports. It was a beautiful winter’s morning, with a fairly gentle northerly to contend with for the first 10 kilometres (I was just grateful it didn’t start gusting any…
Wellington is known for its wind and it’s something that I have a love / hate relationship with. It can make me feel alive and refreshed, or knocked down and eroded like a well worn cliff-face. It takes stamina to live in Wellington and a mental strength that I don’t always have. Before we had…
We nipped away to Martinborough this Saturday and Sunday. The winter weather wasn’t too harsh, milder than it has been, but there were still plenty of showers between the sunny moments. The lambs in the fields and rainbows in the sky definitely hinted a change in the seasons. Spring is coming… (just hurry up already!)….
It’s nearing the end of winter in New Zealand, with the days getting noticeably longer and more fine days in between the cold fronts, but still, when the southerly whips up from Antarctica, we need a little hopeful reminder of spring and summer to come. This weekend, whilst away in our holiday home in Martinborough,…
Three weeks back in New Zealand and I am already lusting after the heat of our Singapore holiday. It seems so much longer since I was stood by the side of the Singapore river, holding an umbrella for shade from the sun, feeling the thirst for water as my body responded to the constant heat…
It’s been a fortnight since school started back for my three daughters and that’s freed up some running time for me! I’ve had some beautiful runs on Wellington’s south coast, even a half marathon out to see the winter colony of New Zealand fur seals at Red Rocks, beyond Owhiro Bay, along the Pariwhero Track….
It’s been two weeks since we returned from our fabulous hols in Singapore (more blog posts coming on that trip!), and we’ve been so busy settling back into ‘Term 3’ of the school year – especially with the man of the house away, on business, for a week and a half. He was working in…
Gardens by the Bay, in Singapore, opened to the public in 2011. It is an amazing development, which brings to life a vision of creating a City in a Garden, as described in detail on the Gardens by the Bay website. Towering over the gardens is the ‘Supertree Grove‘, which made me think of the…
Coming from a New Zealand winter the heat and humidity of Singapore was both welcoming and – at times – exhausting. However, plentiful air conditioned spaces and a great apartment to sleep in meant we were given respite from the heat – failing that we simply sought out water; by way of drinking it, playing…
Singapore, halfway between the UK and NZ, or thereabouts. A guaranteed warm destination to break up our NZ winter. A couple of weeks by the pool with plenty of entertainment to please everyone in our group – from the children (aged 5, 9 and 12) to the parents (myself and hubby) and the grandparents (who…
After an amazing fortnight in Singapore we flew back to New Zealand last Sunday, bracing ourselves for the cold. We had an overnight stay in the comfortable Novetel Hotel at Auckland International Airport, before flying down to Wellington on Monday afternoon (just in time for the northerly to turn to a howling southerly and give us…