Martinborough, Dunedin and Wanaka

Our end of January/first half of February was exceptionally busy. On Saturday 24th Jan Will and I drove over the hill to Martinborough for a couple of nights camping. He was quite excited by the craft beer gift-box he came across in the local supermarket!

It was nice to give the tent another outing, so soon after our big camping trip away.

The main reason for the trip was to attend the Fat Freddy's Drop concert at the Alana Estate Winery on the Sunday night. They are one of my favourite bands, and are always brilliant live. The winery is a lovely venue for a summer concert. We packed a yummy picnic, washed down with a bottle of the local vino. 

The show was excellent, with the highlight, as usual, being the antics of 'Hopepa', aka Joe Lindsay, the band's trombonist and tuba player. If you have never experienced the band live, you can get a taste of it here with Hopepa in his signature tight white shorts... Give the clip a chance, it's bit of a slow burner and Hopepa doesn't even start playing his 'bone until nearly 6 minutes in!

   

 

Monday was Wellington Anniversary day, so a public holiday for the region. Usually my school year begins straight after Wellington Anniversary day with various different meetings throughout the week. However, as many of you know, I have been granted a year of unpaid leave from my school, enabling me to return to my same position and responsibilities in 2017. This is because Will has been granted Research and Study leave from Vic, and we are off on a big adventure with Will visiting colleagues in his field from all over the world at the start of March.

Not having to work meant that I was able to play some badminton at the NZ Masters Games in Dunedin. I flew down at the end of January and spent a week staying with the Roes. It was lovely to catch up with Georgia, since she hadn't been able to make the family camping trip.

Georgia is holding Alfie, Alexander's super cute pet rabbit. Alfie is awesome, Will and I are very tempted to get a house bunny when we get back from our big adventure...

 

The Roes live on the cliffs above St Clair beach, and the Dunedin badminton hall is at St Kildas beach, so I had a nice 30 minute or so walk along the beach as my warm-up each day.

The first event I played was the team event. My team consisted of Stephen Nelson, Leona Head and myself, all from Wellington, and then Duncan Rae who lives in Dunedin (but actually played for Wellington last season). We ended up with the silver medal for our efforts.

The following day was the mixed doubles where I was playing with Stephen in the 35+ age division. Stephen was also playing with Leona in the 45+ division. Unfortunately these were on at the same time... He shouldn't actually have been allowed to play those two divisions (usually you have to do one ending in a '5' and one ending in a '0' -masters is played in 5-year age bands) but it was an oversight from the administrators. Anyway, what is meant was one very very tired Stephen! He literally would come off court with me, then have to go straight back on to play with Leona and so on, with no rest at all between his games. He actually made the bronze medal play-off match in both divisions, but lost them both, partly through sheer exhaustion! It was a small consolation that the pair that won the gold medal in the 35s mixed doubles, I had beaten the previous day when playing with Duncan in the team event. 

The last day of badminton was the womens' doubles where I was playing with Simone Naylor from the Hutt Valley. Despite having hardly played with her before (my pre-masters 'training' involved visiting her summer club in the Hutt Valley on a couple of occasions where I got a few matches with her) we managed to win the gold medal.

The rest of my time in Dunedin was pretty chilled. I did a couple of big long walks on the beach, and also managed to catch up with Haley, who I used to play rugby with at OBU in Wellington, and who was currently living in Dunedin. St Clair is a beautifully rugged and wild beach, I was a bit too scared to go swimming, despite the amazing weather I had while down there. 

 

After returning from Dunedin I had a few days around the house. I spent a couple of days doing big hours taming our garden, which had got a bit neglected... We've had some amazing produce from it this season, including the best tomatoes we've ever grown in our green house. We haven't been able to keep up with picking them, so several neighbours would also come round and help themselves to large containers full every now and then.

 

On Saturday 13th February Will and I had a big BBQ as a joint birthday celebration, and also bit of a farewell party before we head off in March for the remainder of the year. It was a really fun night, and nice to see loads of people en mass before we leave.

That Monday I was off to camp for the week! Despite not working this year, my school was keen for me to help out on the Year 12 camp in Wanaka, and happy to pay me for my time. It was too good a deal to turn down...

I had a really enjoyable time and the girls were great. It was nice to see some of the ones I had taught last year again. We were based at Glendhu Bay, right on the shores of lake Wanaka. There was my group of 9 girls plus an instructor staying there, as well as Barb Beable's group plus instructor, so it was lovely spending some time and catching up with her. We would do our own thing during the day, but had meals together and spent time together in the evenings. Every morning we would start the day with a compulsory dip in the lake. I thought it was a nice invigorating, refreshing way to start the day, but some of the girls didn't agree!

We had big adventure-filled days including lots of team-building and leadership type activities. Rock-climbing and abseiling was also on the agenda.

On one of the days we did a big walk up Roy's Peak which took a good few hours. We turned back a short distance from the top as the weather was closing in and there was some impressive crashing thunder! Also, a couple of girls were struggling with the relentless uphill slog... We did get some lovely views over Wanaka and the surrounds though. It is a really beautiful part of the world...

Another activity was some whitewater swimming at the Hawea slalom canoe course, learning how to cross the river This was something I hadn't done before, and despite being a little scary, it was very cool. You basically set off swimming at a 45 degree angle upstream, then as soon as you hit the white water you just get picked up and 'whooshed' along. You then needed to swim out into the eddy on the other side of the river. It was reassuring that our guide was a top-class white water kayaker, and was in his boat while we were swimming across one by one, ready to rescue anyone if they needed it! 

Our guide also took us to see the man-made 'standing wave' that has been created on the river. We watched a few guys surfing it.

On the Friday we drove back to Queenstown airport with some very tired girls! We drove over the Crown Ranges, giving one last photo op for the majestic surroundings. It was a brilliant camp, and one I would be very keen to go again on next year when I'm back at school.