A Yorkshire Lad

From Whitby all the way to Ship Cove, Queen Charlotte Sound. Captain James Cook's landing spot











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Postman Pat

On the Magic Mail Boat all afternoon delivering mail to islanders along the Queen Charlotte Sound. Pure Magic!















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Star

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Come in number 16

your flat white's arrived



Picton High Street before our Magic Mail Boat trip

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More on mountains

Just the other day, near Punakiaiki and Westport, we passed a whole scientific range!

Mounts:
Fleming, Curie, Kelvin, Euclid, Rutherford, Einstein, Pasteur, Galileo, Copernicus, Lavoisier, Dewar, Priestly

Spent a fascinating 5 minutes working out who invented what!!

Mike said they must have been at the peak of their profession (but I didn't laugh)



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Balmy palms

I am loving these magnificent trees



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Architectural oddities

In Nelson today we spotted this


it's the Inland Revenue building. Almost as bad as our 'sandcastle' at home!

And this is the cathedral
Front . . .


and back . . .


with rather amazing stain glass windows inside


But interestingly it was designed by a Frank Peck in 1924 to a very traditional grand gothic style and the nave and the entrance you see at the back were partly built but in the 1950s, still incomplete, the money had run out and there are various drawings showing suggestions from very contemporary designs to traditional but more modest ones. This simple and cheaper style finally won out and the front and the tower outside is quite stark and grey. But on the inside it's quite fascinating, light and bright and a strange mix of periods! The organ is brilliant, standing on a magnificent modern wooden archway.

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More on significant birthdays

Think the birthday boy had lovely day. Despite being besieged by bumble bees at our (otherwise amazing) campsite just outside Murcheson.

This is he at the Pancake Rocks on the West Coast yesterday


Ate royally in the campsite kitchen and many nationalities wished him a happy birthday after I blew the secret (and the age)!!!

(Only just discovered late in the holiday that you can go to any library to use the Internet free, so here we are in the quite lovely Nelson Library)

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Beach art

On our campsite beach at Hotitika. Amazing shoreline of driftwood
















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Shame about the face(s)

no comment . . .





Except that we were visiting the old gold mining town of Ross a few days ago

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Birthday cuppa

For the birthday that will span 37 hours!! Happy Birthday Mike


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What's in a name

Studying the map, as you do, just love the names of some of New Zealand's mountains:
Mount Aspiring
Mount Awkward
Mount Glorioius
Mount Reticence
Mount Dreadful
Mount Action
Round Hill
and even Breast Peak, which sparks memories of a famously shaped hill Aunty Mike used to point out near LLanaelhaearn!



and best of all . . . Mount Liverpool. Up the reds (and I am happy and proud to include Sheffield United in that call)

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Snow here too

Our brave venture today in a helicopter over Fox Glacier and Mount Cook!


the summit of Mount Cook


and we landed in the snow on the top of Fox Glacier





Back in the heli and over the crevasses of the glacier


and back towards base



Roger and out

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Jungle fever

Tropical rainforest near Haast. You really need a soundtrack for all the eerie buzzing and chirruping!








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Nothing but blue skies

Wanaka and heading north









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Middle Earth

Here we are camping in the heart of Middle Earth! Wanaka to be precise.

Views from our pitch as evening descends on Lake Wanaka below and the wine comes out to accompany the baked beans on toast!!





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Sad past

Moving visit today to the remains of the Chinese Settlement at Arrowtown. A sizeable contingent of gold miners in19th Century New Zealand were Chinese men trying to make a living for their families back home. But despite desperately hard work and harsh living for many years, they were badly ridiculed and never accepted by their European gold prospecting contemporaries. Most of the Chinese never made a better living and many died alone in New Zealand.












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Who could resist

Not us!


Flat whites and the famous sticky bun of Arrowtown, old gold prospectors' town beautifully preserved. Arrived here after amazing drive through Middle Earth from Queenstown. Gollum hot on our trail, even though we'd dodged the orcs.



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Steamy

The Kingston Flyer












And an artistic something from (Bailey, really is, his middle name) Mike:




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