Ten points for any reader who can guess the connection between these two areas of Birmingham without scrolling down the page. Felicity had a 10 am appointment in Moseley, so we decided to catch the bus instead of walking and arriving hot and sweaty. We wondered how we would pay the fare, and were impressed to discover that any credit or debit card can just be touched on the card reader. This technology is coming to NZ over the next few years.
Continue reading Moseley and Edgbaston
Tag: creek
Sovana
Our route for the day started by heading out of Pitigliano down the now familiar Via Cave di Poggio Cane, but when we reached the highway we turned in a new direction and followed a couple of roads until we reached the beginning of the Via Cave di San Guiseppe.
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Pitigliano
Today’s walk was mercifully quite short, as we are spending a second night in Pitigliano. The town has a population of about 4000 people, and although it was once another Etruscan settlement its name dates back to Roman times.
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Cassowary Coast
The area around Mission Beach is known as the Cassowary Coast, because it has one of the highest concentrations of this big bird in the country. You can’t drive more than a few hundred metres without seeing warning signs about them crossing highways. We were determined to see one.
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Bingil Bay
From the deck of our backpacker’s hostel we could see the ocean through the trees, so the first thing we did this morning was to drive down to Bingil Bay and walk up and down the beach. There were signs warning about crocodiles, but I overheard a local saying that all the north Queensland beaches now have these signs so they are not particularly meaningful.
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Gillespies Beach
20 kilometres along a winding metal road out of Fox Glacier is Gillespies Beach. When Felicity was a teenager she and a friend rode all the way out and back on bikes, which is very impressive because this would be a big mission for me now. She has wanted to return ever since, so here we are.
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Lake Mahinapua
Lake Mahinapua is just back from the coast about 10km south of Hokitika. Before there were any roads in this area, there used to be a couple of paddle steamers travelling up the Mahinapua Creek and across the lake transporting gold miners to Ross, the next town south.
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Punakaiki
The rain arrived on Saturday morning as advertised, so we decided to drive to Greymouth and visit our friend Joy. Two days parked in the hot sun with almost no driving meant that our house battery had gone flat and the fridge defrosted, another good reason for running the motor for a while.
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Lake Otuhie
After a stop in Takaka to stock up on food and diesel, and for me to do a couple of urgent web update jobs for clients, we drove out past Collingwood to the west coast.
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Rangitopuni Creek
A recent newspaper article about king tides this weekend showing a photo of the Riverhead Bridge walkway under water reminded me that it has been a long time since we’ve been that far up the harbour.
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Rocky’s Goldmine Trail
We spent the last night of our Anniversary Day holiday camped on the edge of the Firth of Thames at Little Waikawau Bay. We had a swim before dinner, but the water is pretty shallow, and the “beach” was stony and not easy to walk on in bare feet.
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Fairy Falls
I’ve walked to Fairy Falls several times before, but always in mid summer, so there has never been as much water coming down as there was this weekend.
Mercer Bay
Annie the Canadian Te Araroa walker rang us on Thursday night from Orewa, so we arranged to meet up somewhere on the Okura walkway the next day.
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Pollen Island
One of Felicity’s university colleagues has recently got keen on kayaking, so we arranged to meet this afternoon for an exploration of the inner Waitemata Harbour.
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Brigham Creek
This week my main preoccupation is spending time with grandson Eli, but they have gone up to visit his grandmother in Ruakaka. So today was our first opportunity to go for a kayak since our return from the UK.
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Dollis Valley Greenwalk
Today we took a tube and a couple of buses to the Moat Mount nature reserve on the outskirts of London, then walked home following the Dollis Brook.
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Drury Creek
There have been many occasions when I’ve crossed the Drury Creek on the southern motorway and thought it would be nice to kayak there. Today I got my wish.
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Oakley Creek with Gillian
We had arranged to meet a couple of friends at Coxs Bay this morning for a kayak, but about an hour beforehand I got a text message from Gillian complaining that it was raining.
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Paremoremo Picnic
The recent removal of all the pines at end of the road had turned the ramp to soft sticky clay when we launched our kayaks at Whenuapai this morning.
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Up Duck Creek
The tide wasn’t suitable for a lunchtime paddle today, but even though it was windy we were both keen so we loaded the kayaks early afternoon and set off.
Continue reading Up Duck Creek