We live in a beautiful city :-)

During the remainder of our Sabbatical Martin and I are hoping to go camping for a week each month, so last Sunday after church we headed off to Ambury Park.  My fitness has definitely improved: the first time we went there it took me 1h13; this time was 58 min cycling time, although a little more than that as we stopped near the park to buy mandarins from a family fundraising for their son's rugby boots.  Quite a treat to have extra fruit when camping - heavy things are always at a premium!

There was hardly anyone in the campsite so we put our tent a bit closer to the amenities area than usual - and right next to a stunning wee glade that stayed remarkably dry when it rained.

On the whole we had fantastic weather, but it was a bit wet on Sunday when we were getting there (and on Friday on the way home, too).  We were using our old tent, which isn't wonderfully waterproof, hence the tarp over the top for extra protection.  The photo above is from Monday morning, and you can see all our wet stuff drying on a long line at the right!

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.

New Year's camp on Pōnui Island

This past week Martin and I were on Pōnui Island, where we went for Scripture Union Bible Study Camp in January 2022 and 2023.  Scripture Union does four summer camps back to back on Pōnui: New Year's Camp (better known as 'family camp'), camps for the younger and older halves of high school, then Bible Study Camp.  This year we wanted to go with friends from church who have kids, so we were at New Year's Camp - which turned out to be more different from Bible Study Camp than I'd expected.  It was much more of a holiday, with only 3 teaching sessions and one church service - as opposed to 11-ish teaching sessions and 'testimony time' each evening at Bible Study Camp.  Other differences included there being at least one significant 'fun' activity each day (camping out under the stars, a picnic at another bay, a concert, a disco etc) and access to boats was strictly limited to when there was skilled supervision - although you could swim any time you reckoned there was enough water.

It was lovely to be back on Pōnui.  It's such a beautiful place.

Back at Ambury Park

Last April Martin and I camped at Ambury Park, the only council campsite we can get to solely by bike :-)  We'd thought it'd be a good place to bring people who hadn't been camping before: it's a fairly flat site, has non-smelly toilets and even hot showers(!), is pretty affordable, and is only a 20 minute drive from where we live, so very accessible for many of our friends.

We tried to get a group from church to join us camping there this past weekend. Various things came up that meant we ended up camping on our own, but friends from church came out to join us on both the Friday and Saturday mornings :-) 

Bird-watching walk with our Saturday visitors:

Camping at Pae o te Rangi

Last weekend, Martin and I had a 5-day break at the Pae o te Rangi campground in the Cascades area of the Waitakere Ranges, near-ish to Te Henga/Bethell's Beach.

We caught the train to Swanson then got on our bikes - as you can see, it had some steep bits!

Biking up the first steep bit, to Waitakere township.  I forgot to take my asthma inhaler when I first got on the train (it takes 30 minutes or so to kick in), so I was struggling with asthma up this bit and Martin had to take over my bike a little before the top.

the gradient of the route as a whole

Camping at Ambury Park

Martin and I are just back from a long weekend camping at Ambury Park.  It's the only Auckland Council campground that's comfortably within my biking range, so no public transport was involved.  There was something magic about getting on our bikes outside our house, and riding off to a different world :-)

Me heading off.  We started on the road but joined the cycleway at Bollard Ave and took that all the way to Māngere Bridge :-)

Camping at Wenderholm

Life's been a bit busy recently, but I've finally found time to share photos of a lovely holiday Martin and I had 4 weeks back, at Wenderholm.  We'd originally intended to camp at Ambury Park (the only council campsite within accessible biking distance from our house), but it was solidly booked for the dates we had in mind.  Various more-obvious alternatives also fell through and eventually we landed on the Schischka campground, a wee bit up the Puhoi River from Wenderholm beach.

a neat detail in the posts at the Silverdale bus station

To get there we caught the bus into town, the bus up to Silverdale and the bus to Waiwera.  I've never been to Waiwera for anything other than the (currently non-operational) hot pools - it turns out there's a rather lovely beach there :-)

 

Camping at Karamatura

Last weekend Martin and stayed at the Karamatura campground in the Waitakere Ranges.  When I was a child my family used to often take visitors to Auckland on the Karamatura Loop Walk, so it's a place I've been many times, although never to stay overnight.

We'd originally planned to camp there in November and to go to Ambury Park last weekend, but it turned out that campsite is closed for the winter so Karamatura it was. 

This is near our tentsite.  It's a stunningly beautiful place, and I loved going to sleep to the sound of running water.

Unlike the other Council campsites we've stayed out (which have all been $16 ones - this was $9 and hence more basic) there was only one picnic table.  But it came with a most excellent shelter, and for all but one night we were the only campers, so we mostly kept our stuff spread out all over it.

Resting - on Waiheke and at home

Over ANZAC weekend Martin and I spent four nights camping at Poukaraka Flats on Waiheke Island.  It's a fairly basic Auckland Council campground in the Regional Park there, although less basic than some - there are flush toilets, and the showers are set up so the water reservoirs heat up nicely on a sunny day.  The showers also have open ceilings and are located next to some tall trees: it's quite lovely to look up into leaves and a brilliant blue sky :-)

We stayed at the same campground over ANZAC weekend last year.  Knowing the place a bit did make the break especially restful - I wasn't so interested in making sure I saw the various interesting things in the area, meaning I spent most of the time just resting.

Here we are about to get going.  Most of the kit's on Martin's bike, with just a few bits and pieces on mine.

Here are the bikes after visiting Waiheke Island's Countdown: my bike's a bit more laden, now that we have four night's groceries added to the mix.

I'd made really good time getting to the supermarket.  We'd biked to the local train station, caught the train into town and then the ferry across to Waiheke.  Last year it took me about an hour to get from the ferry at Matiatia to the supermarket in Ostend; this time it was 45 minutes :-)  However, after that things didn't go so well.  Waiheke's pretty hilly, and at the beginning of the last hill I ran out of oomph.  I've been working very hard recently, and I think I was just too tired - especially with the extra weight of groceries.

Fortunately, where I ran out of energy was by the beach right next to the beach where we'd be camping.  Martin suggested I leave my bike at the carpark and walk around the headland, and he'd bike his bike up and over then nip around the headland for my bike and bike that up and over as well.  In the end, I decided to take a somewhat longer route and walk over the headland that divides the two beaches - it was a hot day and I wanted some cover, plus it's always nice to be in the bush.  I took it pretty slowly and ended up at the campsite at exactly the same time as Martin rolled up on my bike - about an hour after we'd left the supermarket, the same time as it'd taken me to bike last year :-)

It's a glorious place to be: above is the view looking back towards the campsite from the beach at low tide.

At the right in the photo below is the headland I walked over to get to the campsite.  It's an old pa site, with lots of kumara pits.

Martin serving up dinner.  These council campsites always seem to have enough picnic tables for anyone who wants to to commandeer one, which is awfully handy.  Our tent is big enough to sleep in, but doesn't really have space for much stuff, so we kept all our groceries and other bits and pieces on the table the whole time.  Behind Martin you can see there's just a thin band of trees (which made a very effective shelter-belt) and then the sea.  It was lovely to go to sleep to the wash of the waves high on the beach :-)

Our setup.  You can see the picnic table and tent.  We kept a bike at each end of the table the whole time, which meant we could cover the table with a tarp at night or when it rained and the tarp stayed reasonably well above the stuff.  It rained a few times while we were there, but not enough to be really troublesome.

The view looking out from the beach at low tide.  You probably can't pick it in the photo, but w could see the Sky Tower slightly to the left of the small island that's roughly in the middle of the photo.  There were many brief rain showers during our stay, and Martin spent a lot of time looking out at this view watching the various bands of cloud roll in - they moved remarkably quickly!

It was so good to take time to rest.  We did one bush walk, had a couple of swims on the finest day, and listened to a 5-ish hour audio book together.  Twice Martin picked cockles for our meals :-) Other than that, I spent an awful lot of time dozing, and didn't do much else other than sit in various places watching birds.  It was so good to just 'be'.

It wasn't the cheapest of holidays, at $275 for four nights, but not too bad.  Also not too bad from a greenhouse gas point of view, being responsible for around 70kg CO2e (what the planet can absorb per person in about three weeks).  And it was so good for us both.

At home, I often find it difficult to truly rest; although I still spend much of my day lying down, I'm most often both playing Solitaire and listening to something.  But on this break I found myself quite content to just do nothing.  I've been trying to practise more of that at home, too, in the week or so that we've been back - and twice in recent days that's led to me falling asleep in the afternoon - so good :-)

Today has been my weekly Sabbath.  I'm so grateful to God for the rhythm of the week, and for every week having a day to rest and to be with God and to do the things I feel like doing.  This morning I spent time reflecting on Isaiah 30:15:

For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel:
In returning and rest you shall be saved;
    in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.

It comes at a time when God is trying to call the people of Israel back to him, but they're not interested.  And yet, reading those words, I'm so interested!  Being with God, rest, quietness, trust - these are the things I so often find myself longing for.

So, I thank God for the regular rhythm of weekly rest, and for regular patches of quiet in the day.  I pray for deep rest.  But, I also pray for the simplicity of purpose that I hope comes from spending time with God.  Because the other thing I was reflecting on this morning was the fleetingness of life.  I was reading these words sitting under our oak tree.  The leaves were falling - each of them has come to the end of its existence as a leaf.  Ants were crawling over me, and I killed one of them as I flicked it off my leg.  More significantly, someone we care about a lot from our church is dying - and, although he's lived a long life, it still feels like his life is being cut short as he's so actively living and growing right now.  And so I pray, in the short time that I will live, that I won't be consumed with busyness but that I will live out of a still, quiet core - that trust in God will be my strength and my guide, day to day.

A very local holiday

This past weekend Martin and I had a 4-day holiday.  We'd been hoping to go camping and tramping in the Waitakere Ranges but, with overnight stays away from home not allowed at the current Covid restrictions, we hatched a new plan.  On the Thursday, Saturday and Sunday we slept in, had a late-ish breakfast then biked to Coyle Park for the day; on the Friday we still had the slow morning, but then we drove to the Waitakeres for a day walk.

Martin's bike, loaded with a surprising amount of stuff for the day:

Camping on Waiheke

Over ANZAC weekend, Martin and I headed off for our second ever bike camping adventure: four nights camping on Waiheke :-)

Here we are at the local train station, about to start our adventure.

Bike camping at Ōmana

 After church last Sunday, Martin and I headed off on an adventure!

Christmas holiday in Taupo

Our good friend Temi recently moved to Taupo for work; Martin and I decided to go and visit her for a week over Christmas.

To reduce the carbon footprint of our trip, we went by bus,* including catching the local bus into town to catch our bus.

* a long-distance bus in New Zealand has about a sixth the carbon footprint per person as the total footprint of an 'average' petrol car traveling the same distance.  That means your emissions are about equal if you have all five seats in the car full, but with just the two of us it reduced our emissions to a third.

Martin walking along our street to catch the bus.  He had the bulk of the luggage.

Living in the jungle :-)

Friends of ours are overseas at the moment and have asked me to care for their houseplants while they are away.  I ended up putting them all in our bedroom: I'm rather enjoying living in the jungle!

The 'bearcam' that I've watched in recent years is live again now, too, and I'm loving it.  There are currently six cameras live, giving different views of Brooks River, the salmon swimming up it and the bears catching them.  Today I had a lot of fun watching a mum with three yearling cubs (i.e. ones born last year) spend half and hour or so at the lower river.

If you'd like to join in the fun, the feeds are here.  Having so many feeds running at once might slow your computer down - if that happens you can click on the 'Youtube' logo at the bottom left of the feed of your choice.  That will open that camera's feed in a separate tab on your browser and you can close the main page down.  I find it helpful to open the comments feed in a separate tab - clicking across to that when something interesting happens is very helpful in understanding what's going on.

Enjoy!

Holiday in Whangarei

On Easter Monday, Martin and I jumped on the bus and headed up to Whangarei to visit his parents for the week :-)

Things I'm enjoying looking at :-)

We have a wee raised area on the corner of the wheelchair ramp where I keep pots.  I'm particularly enjoying some of them right now.

A 'coral' manuka that I'm keeping in a pot until it's big enough for the flower garden.

Bear Cam

In recent days I have been very much enjoying watching bear cam - a live stream of Brooks Falls in Alaska where brown bears are eating their fill of leaping salmon.  It's stunning!

Eight bears fishing the main falls yesterday.

A Holiday in Te Aroha

Martin and I spent last week on holiday in Te Aroha with his aunty and uncle.

The two of us in Martin's aunty and uncle's front garden

Some cool things I've been watching

I'm continuing to enjoy spending a lot of time watching the bear cam: it's such an amazing opportunity to be able to watch what's going on all the way over in Alaska in real time!

There aren't many salmon jumping any more and the bear numbers have definitely thinned out.  The bears that remain are super-fat: it's delightful to watch the way their bellies roll when they shake themselves!  However, I seem to be noticing more other species there now.   This morning I spent about half an hour watching this amazing bald eagle.

Just chilling.

The bears are back :-)

Last year I wrote about the many hours I spent engrossed by the activities of the bears at Brooks Falls in Alaska.  I've been keenly watching the feed in recent days and weeks, waiting for them to reappear.  Today, there they were!  There don't seem to be any salmon yet, but I have seen a mum with three cubs checking out the possibilities :-)

Click on the image below to join me in watching (if you don't see an image, try here instead).

Enjoy!