dovegreyreader scribbles

Every last drop...

..squeezing every last minute out of these final few days of my stay and, on an unusually wet and soggy Christchurch summer's day (clearly weather preparing me for a return to the Shire) Offspringette and I spent a happy few hours in the Canterbury Museum. It's all given me plenty to read up on when I get home.

We both enjoy a good taxidermist's diorama and there were plenty of them...

I have been fascinated by All Things Antarctica whilst I have been here and have dipped into quite a few books as well as visiting the Antarctic Centre. This is the furthest south I am ever likely to be, and the interest was heightened and hugely saddened by the death of Henry Worsley this week, just thirty miles from his solo-on-foot-unsupported destination across Antarctica when he made his heartbreaking decision to call for help. That day we happened to be wandering around nearby Lyttleton, the port from which so many of the expeditions set off, when we saw this...

Shackleton's captain, Frank Worsley, was a relative of Henry's and we all remarked on the likeness... something about the steely courage and determination of that mouth. RIP Henry Worsley.

You know when you come across the film playing on a loop in a museum, and you think you might not be that interested, but it's a good excuse to have a rest, and my feet were definitely complaining. Well we sat down and were riveted by this one, especially given we were surrounded by all the equipment.

It was an account of the 1950s joint UK/NZ trans-Antarctic expedition led by Vivian Fuchs and Edmund Hillary and my, how times had changed from the days of Scott's ill-fated journey...

It is my last day today, more drops to be squeezed from the visit, and I am promised sight of an actual Kiwi...

 

Posted on the move...

Kaikoura...

...was beautiful.

Back from two weeks camping all over South Island, a quick turn around on the laundry and off for an overnight camp at Kaikoura for some seal and dolphin watching and some snorkelling for Paua.

I passed on the snorkelling because I never have been able to remember not to breath through my nose and then I panic, but the Paua catch was very exciting and the shells are of course exquisite.

The full moon took us by surprise last night, creeping up over the Pacific Ocean after a warm but overcast day, creating yet another breathtaking and memorable New Zealand moment...

I drifted off to sleep to the sound of the ocean (and the nearby traffic and train tracks, but the ocean prevailed) and woke this morning to a glorious sunrise from my tent...

Pathways across the ocean never cease to enthral ...

 

 

Posted on the move...

Back on the grid...

After limited wifi for quite a few days, lots of tent pitching and enjoying the outdoor life with campsite facilities ranging from excessive (hot showers) to limited (long drop toilet and a lake) suddenly we find ourselves in a 5* hotel near the Franz Josef glacier.

This is by good fortune rather than intentional planning, and we can only thank the person who spilt a large container of milk on the carpet of our rainforest retreat cabin prior to our arrival. The carpet had indeed been cleaned but was indeed still very soggy when we checked in, and having kept considerably dryer in a tent for the last two weeks Offspringette sprang into action and we happily opted for the free upgrade to the 5* room.

In we trotted, bedraggled after a walk to the glacier, to be greeted by a Maori warrior proffering complimentary kiwi juice (with a twist of lime) and hot towels, then, relieved of our swag bags by the porter, we were shown to our room while the car...stuffed to the roof with smelly camping gear, food boxes, tents the lot, was valet parked for us.

We are making full use of these facilities I can tell you and I adore the possum fur cushion on my bed.

I have done so much it will take me weeks to tell you about it when I get home, but for now I rate my swim in Lake Hawea as a highlight from the last few days...

Couldn't let the side down. Cold but warmer than the Atlantic so I managed a good half an hour in there and have decided this means I can now consider myself a Wild Swimmer.

Milford Sound was utterly breathtaking..no words just this wonderful example of a hanging valley, which brought all those school geography lessons on glaciation to life...

I am now very excited about Hokitika (land of The Luminaries) to come...

 

Posted on the move...

The Otago Central Rail Trail....

Clyde to Middlemarch...done it!

Well nigh on 100kms of it for me thanks to my magnificent e bike which just made the last two days of the trail such a pleasure.

For sixteen years of harsh winters and scorchio summers scores of labourers, stonemasons, blacksmiths and engineers worked to push through the 150km of rail track from Middlemarch (1891) to Clyde (1907) and for well over half a century the Otago Central Railway was the economic lifeline of the Maniototo and Central Otago on New Zealand's South Island. When the line closed a great deal more hard work and ingenuity created this most superb cycle trail

I kept thinking about all that hard graft as I cycled, and also looking across at the old gold diggings because I am reading The Colour by Rose Tremain as we travel, and living this same land through the eyes of Joseph and Harriet Blackstone too. Joseph is consumed by his obsession to find gold, and where to place his 72 square foot claim, and as I look out on the landscape the hardship and the isolation and the struggle is writ large...

Breathtaking scenery and acres of blue sky across the Maniototo, I had to keep stopping and staring and pinching myself to believe I was really here and doing it...I mean me on a bike??

Stamped my cycle trail passport along the way, and very proud I am of it too..

The next adventure beckons, I am told it involves rain forest cabins and hot springs...

 

Posted on the move...

Hail from the Trail...

...the Otago Rail Trail cycling adventure to be exact, via Christchurch, the Container Mall, Lake Tekapo, Mount St John (the top in a Force 20), the Church of the Good Shepherd at sunrise, Mount Cook...

 

the Hooker Valley Walk, abandoned my tent for the Hermitage Hotel to sit out the 70mph gales.

Onto Oamaru, the Steam Punk HQ, Janet Frame's house in Eden Street, Kakanui for a wonderful evening with Hilary (who comments here) and her sister, a drive along the Pacific coast to the trail head at Clyde and then onto a bike for the first time in 20 years...

 

Survived 27k at 30degs, rest day in the Maniototo today gazing at the hills and writing my journal and my electric bike arrives tomorrow to whizz me through the rest of the trail.

They call me Easy Rider...I'm not daft, who wants to end up in hospital on a drip.

A picture a day happening over here on Instagram <<<<<<<<

Loving the country, the people and the sunshine.

More next wifi zone xx

 

 

Posted on the move...

Arrivals...

Well I can't deny that the lead in week to the Big Departure was one fraught with the Law of Sod.

If something was thinking about going awry, or threatening to go awry, or even pretending to go awry, it tried but thankfully was no match for Family Dovegrey on form....even down to the hotel room near the airport with NO hairdryer and the lever to the shower coming off in Bookhound's hand, while I curb minor hysteria in the background at the thought of setting off on The Journey already looking like I had just arrived.

But forget all that, it seems like the dim and distant past because I am arrived and hats off to Singapore Airlines. If you've got to sit there for that long then they make it bearable. From the hot towels, to the food and the regular rounds of drinks through the night (or was it day?) the Singapore Girls (and Chaps) were always on hand to assist. Fuelled by four fruit platters (having considered that the 'safest' eating option) and gallons of water, I travelled eleven (or is it twelve) thousand miles sans mishap or disaster.

All your tips came in tremendously useful, and I can only apologise to the lady from Dunedin sitting in the aisle seat next to me on the first leg, who having said 'No worries I never sleep,' when I apologised in advance for my regular walkabouts, then proceeded to drift into a state akin to Sleeping Beauty which I just had to ruin every few hours, because I was wide awake and needing to go for a yomp up and down.

'You can't be British about this and suffer,' I told myself as I nudged her yet again..

Thank the Lord for podcasts I say. Life savers...

I must also thank those recent episodes of The Archers, Desert Island Discs (Sandi Toksvig, thank you..you helped pass the last interminable hour with a smile) , the Book Programme...far too excited to read for myself so listened to others, until eventually this.....well that above because the photo has slipped into the wrong place and I can't move it.

Can you believe that I had tears streaming down my face at my first glimpse of the Land of the Long White Cloud...

All the events of 2015, and then the planning for the trip since August, and the weeks and weeks of excitement and finally I get a glimpse...

These pictures alone, and the breathtaking views from my window seat as I flew in, make the ten hours trapped alongside two lovely but deeply comatose New Zealand chaps (who were a lot harder to wake but by this time there is nothing British and long-suffering about me whatsoever) worth every single second of the discomfort.

And then I see Christchurch..

And I am fit to burst with the excitement.

And then I land...

That's me in there, seat 36A, right over the wheels, I heard them (reassuring.)

You will be pleased to know that my disinfected walking boots were allowed in the country, as was the rest of me, and from Customs it was only a skip and a hop to a waiting Offspringette and the tears and the hugs.

I am arrived.

 

 

Posted on the move...

Happy New Year...

Here's wishing each and every one of you a healthy, content and peaceful New Year...

..and with thanks to you all for being there, for reading and for commenting all year round.

Thank you too for all the good wishes, comments, thoughtful messages and packages over Christmas, I owe a lot of thank you letters and would have been in big trouble at the age of seven for not writing them...but forgive me, time and life have overtaken me a bit this week.

The New Zealand adventure beckons, I am surrounded by piles of things, and piles on top of piles, all of which the Kayaker is taking in hand tomorrow, reducing by half and then folding and packing in his own inimitable style which has seen him travel around the world with ease so hopefully I will too.

I am hoping to keep in touch as I travel with some mobile blogging via my iPad, so apologies in advance for enormous pictures that I can't shrink (because I haven't practised enough with new camera and the Blogsy mobile software) and it might be a bit 'as and when' and full of typos too.

Keep an eye out over here <<<<<<<< for Instagram pictures, or follow me directly on Instagram if you want to. Expect a gallimaufry there from the Southern Hemisphere.

So excited now I can barely sit still.

My reading has whittled down to more Peter James on my Kindle (Dead Man's Footsteps...very good) but I shall be on the lookout for good reads and bookshops while I am away of course. However just in case it seems as if I have forgotten all about books here's one for you to look out for and which will be top of the reading pile when I come back...

The Button Box - Lifting the Lid on Women's Lives by Lynn Knight ( Chatto & Windus ~ Publication Date 18th February 2016)

"I used to love the rattle and whoosh of my grandma’s buttons as they scattered from their Quality Street tin.

An inlaid wooden chest the size of a shoe box holds Lynn Knight’s button collection. A collection that has been passed down through three generations of women: a chunky sixties-era toggle from a favourite coat, three tiny pearl buttons from her mother’s first dress after she was adopted as a baby, a jet button from a time of Victorian mourning. Each button tells a story.

‘They change our view of the world and the world’s view of us’ said Virginia Woolf of clothes. The Button Box traces the story of women at home and in work from pre-First World War domesticity, through the first clerical girls in silk blouses, to the delights of beading and glamour in the thirties to short skirts and sexual liberation in the sixties."

My mum's button box was an old Coronation year sweet tin with a picture of the young queen wearing a diamond brooch in the shape of a bow. Her Majesty still wears that brooch...

and now I discover it was first worn by Queen Victoria.

Whenever I see it I think of my mum and sewing and buttons and the tin. Every button a diamond in my eyes when I was young, but especially the single wooden duffel coat toggle that was my favourite.

If you have wonderful memories of the button box too, or an interest in women's lives, then you will love this book so keep an eye out and get the reservation in at the library pronto...I've had a job keeping my nose out of it I can tell you.

Happy New Year... more from the South dreckly.