Segue from 1st blog entry It's roughly 4 weeks since we departed for this partially tropical, fantastically green and pleasant (south is) land. Our time has been hugely biased towards doing things rather than spent on blogging, I'm sure you'll agree that this is the right way round but it's left us feeling we've neglected our audience a little so I rose early on Easter day (comparisons with Jesus purely coincidental) to do some writing. What this is not going ...

A 2 wheeled adventure We hired some mountain bikes for an afternoon in Arrowtown (just outside Queenstown). We'd read about a 4WD track that goes to a place called Macetown which is a ghost Gold Town and naively thought we'd give it a go. What a (good) mistake, it was incredibly hard, up ridiculous dirt tracks, over about 20 river crossings (over the same river!) and some hairy descents on the way back, it was so brutal (at least to someone very sheltered of o...

A 2 wheeled adventure We hired some mountain bikes for an afternoon in Arrowtown (just outside Queenstown). We'd read about a 4WD track that goes to a place called Macetown which is a ghost Gold Town and naively thought we'd give it a go. What a (good) mistake, it was incredibly hard, up ridiculous dirt tracks, over about 20 river crossings (over the same river!) and some hairy descents on the way back, it was so brutal (at least to someone very sheltered of o...

Tuesday 17th March - Thursday 19th March, 2009 From the rat race to a slower pace... The 29 hour flight wasn't half as bad as we imagined and after NZ customs inspected our hiking boots for any alien substances (fat chance on mine which had only been used around Heathrrow airport at this point!) we found ourselves taking the "$5 bus" into Christchurch, which cost us $7 each... trading standards?! Arriving on St Paddy's Day we soon found ourselves...

Sunday 15th March, 2009 On time for once! Yes, even after 12 hours of drinking we made it to Heathrow in time for our flight (thanks to Jane & Ralph for feeding and watering us so we felt human again!) Another on time arrival was my nephew - as predicted by Steph, my sister in law, Robson Tempest Gomm was born on his due date! He arrived soon after we took to the skies at 11:06 on Sunday 15th March, weighing 6lb 11oz - quite small for such a big smelly ...