Travels in New Zealand and beyond, going back to 2003!
The Queen Elizabeth Park in Masterton is a delight in early autumn. The park has plenty of deciduous trees to set the tone for autumn, with a mix of yellows, reds, browns and oranges. There’s even a Horse Chestnut tree, near the children’s play area, offering up seeds for conker games. I felt a strong…
Wellington’s coastline is a rugged one, with a mix terrain of beaches, from sandy to pebbled and everything in between. There are well known bays and others so small they have no mapped name, but are undoubtedly given names with affection by locals. This past week we’ve taken a few strolls from our home to…
Wellington to Martinborough, in the Wairarapa, is a one and a half hour drive, skirting the beautiful Wellington harbour, continuing along the highway, through Lower and Upper Hutt, before reaching the beautiful area of Kaitoke Regional Park and then ascending the Rimutaka Hill on State Highway 2. There are a couple of beautiful places to…
It was a perfect evening, with not a breath of wind (rare for Wellington). The sun’s heat was still present, even as it began to set in the sky. The warm evening was too much of a temptation to play. It didn’t feel like the night before the first day of a new school year….
Halloween last year was as it should be – in the northern hemisphere, in autumn (albeit living in Santa Barbara, California, wasn’t quite the northern hemisphere type of Halloween I remembered from my apple bobbing youth growing up in England, UK). It was lovely to be living somewhere where pumpkins were plentiful (as we experienced…
We’ve been back in Wellington, New Zealand, a fortnight and are quickly reacquainting ourselves with favourite haunts. The weather has mostly been conducive to outdoor activities and our children are loving playing with their friends. Here’s five outdoor favourites from the last fortnight… 1. Rock pooling, climbing and beach play at Scorching Bay beach. This…
It was an unusual overcast morning, with cooler temperatures than we have become accustomed to in southern California. We didn’t realise, until we arrived at our destination, that this would work in our favour. We’d planned to meet up with a friend and her sons at the butterfly exhibition at the Santa Barbara Museum of…
We’ve enjoyed some wonderful moments at the beach in Santa Barbara this week. I often head out for a run when hubby gets home from work, finishing up on the beach, where he then meets me with our daughters. Our youngest two are joining in with a children’s sand race at Ventura Beach soon, as…
We left the caravan park in north Wales on a Saturday morning, after a wonderful family reunion and holiday at Hafan Y Mor Holiday Park, taking the whole day to drive to Cardiff in south Wales. There were no three lane motorways, just single lanes of traffic, flowing in both directions, the whole drive. It…
In an exquisite natural location of breathtaking beauty sits the artfully designed village of Portmeirion in North Wales. During our week’s stay in North Wales this was one of the highlights. Travelling in a large family group, a blend of aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins, can make finding a day-trip to suit everyone a challenge…
We stumbled across a lovely playground in the centre of Copenhagen on a hot summer’s day. A paddling pool invited the children to splash around and cool down. Ride-on bikes lay about for children to freely play on. A welcoming hut had toys outside, akin to a pre-school, but all the toys were for passing children…
We’ve been very much home bodies after our exciting week away in San Francisco, with side trips to Santa Cruz and Monterey. It’s been nearly three weeks since we got back and we’ve been very self contained in the house we’re renting in Santa Barbara, till the end of August this year. The three girls are…
The children discovered there was a ‘House of Air‘, in an old airplane hanger, in Crissy Field Park, San Francisco… Our first visit was in the evening, when the older girls could play an exciting game of ball tag on a dozen trampolines, but our youngest had missed out on the younger children’s bounce session,…
A few gems I’ve loved this week… ⤠Watching my daughters and dear ‘hubbie’, on a Sunday avo at a local school field, being active, having fun and keeping fit together (and eating pizza together al fresco). ⤠An afternoon visit to the marina and maritime museum in Santa Barbara with my three daughters. ⤅