Sabbatical three and a half weeks in

At the end of February Martin gave up his job with a view to taking six months off as a Sabbatical.  This is something we started saving for a while back, after we were struck by the idea of the Sabbatical year in the Leviticus 25 in the Bible:

The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land shall observe a Sabbath for the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in their yield, but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of complete rest for the land, a Sabbath for the Lord: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap the aftergrowth of your harvest or gather the grapes of your unpruned vine: it shall be a year of complete rest for the land. You may eat what the land yields during its Sabbath—you, your male and female slaves, your hired and your bound laborers who live with you, for your livestock also, and for the wild animals in your land all its yield shall be for food.

 Leviticus 25:1-7, NRSV

Camping at Wenderholm

Martin and I are just back from four nights camping at the Schischka campground at Wenderholm Regional Park.  It's one of six Auckland Council campgrounds we know of that are accessible by public transport and/or foot and bike; to get to this one we bus to town, bus to Silverdale and bus to Waiwera, then it's a 30-40 min walk (mostly through bush) to the campsite.  It's about 3 hours door to door, and for a lot of that we were on the top deck of a double decker bus :-)

Neither of us took many photos - we were mostly just enjoying a very peaceful quiet week to mark the start of our six month Sabbatical - but below are a few pictures from the trip.

There was hardly anyone in the campsite so we were able to take up heaps of space.  We've recently bought a second pair of adjustable poles for the tarp.  The Schischka campsite doesn't have any picnic tables or substantial trees, so the extra poles were very helpful in enabling us to make a nice cool resting space for the hot afternoons.