Now that the summer has arrived in Gisborne, the town has come to life with lots of goings on to keep us entertained. One of the first things to kick off the Summer Season is the first Speedway meet. This happens on/around bonfire night, which for some unknown reason is celebrated here. Slightly apprehensive about the evening's plans, we took ourselves along to the Speedway in order to enjoy what had been promised to us as Gisborne's best fireworks display at the end. On entering the arena, a grassy bank looking onto a dirt track, we were greeted by the roar of car engines, high pitched squeals of wheels skidding along the ground and a few loud, very loud, back firing exhausts. We have never seen anything quite like the 15 races that we then sat through; sports cars, bangers, estate cars, teenagers in mini cars and even motorbikes with sidecars. Health and safety was definitely not on the cards as these vehicles hurtled around the track, sparks flying. Eventually, time had come for the much awaited fireworks. The lights were dimmed and we were wondering from which direction the fireworks would be coming from, the golf course was our best guess. We were shortly proven wrong when the fireworks started hurtling out of wooden crates in the centre of the track, that to our surprise had been sat there during all of the races we had just watched, surrounded by the sparking vehicles.

Not too far from Gisborne is one of the East Coast's best known secrets - the Rere Rockslide. This is essentially a river running over a sloping rock that has become smooth(ish) over the years. The idea is that you take along a body board, large tyre inner tube, inflatable mattress or similar and ride down the rock slope landing in the pool at the bottom. Claire's first trip to the rockslide was with Fiona, Lauren and Sean whilst Greg was busy working. She had gone fully prepared with a full wetsuit, trainers and body board. She approached the slide with apprehension, putting the board down some might say a little too early. A few (or more) seal like shimmy movements and she was on her way. Unfortunately she had not really thought about technique until mid slide when she realised her hands were about to graze their way down a bumpier part of the ride. Not one to stay calm under the influence of adrenaline, she rapidly decided to abort the body board. On her front, heading at speed down the rockslide with her trainers and knees digging into the rock as hard as possible, she finished her ride with a plunge into the freezing cold water at the bottom. Luckily, unlike Fiona, she perfected her technique on the next few rides, unfortunately only on one occasion did Fiona manage to arrive at the bottom still in contact with her body board. She has since taken Greg back for a go. On the second trip they were greeted on arrival by the air ambulance air lifting one unfortunate thrill seeker to hospital after they had slipped on the rock. Not deterred they both had a go, this time in mid summer heat, with Claire's technique now perfected and Greg's natural ability to disregard his own personal safety coming in handy as we went without the protective wetsuit, risking it in swim stuff alone.

Unfortunately, with the arrival of summer, the netball season has now come to an end. We're not sure where we finished in the league, but in our minds we were definitely one of the strongest teams. After finally taking in some of the key rules, Greg is now the proud owner of the end of season title of 'Most improved'.

Time to progress to a more summer based activity, Claire undertook her third surfing lesson. This was her first lesson with Frank of 'Surfing with Frank' and she was excited to be finally meeting the man himself. She arrived eager to take in some key tips to improve her technique. Frank is a fairly loud, American gentleman in his 70s at a guess who has devoted his life to surfing and ended up based here in Gisborne due to the great surfing beaches. Shortly after arrival she realised Frank was talking to a girl called Laura, Claire was a little confused as there was certainly no one answering, and on looking around there were actually no girls within hearing distance. It was then that she realised, he was calling her Laura. After both Claire and Greg corrected him twice to no avail, Claire embarked on the lesson with her new persona. She threw herself right into this role, even introducing herself as Laura to some fellow surfing students. After the first half of the 2 hour lesson, Claire had got to grips with responding to her calls 'Laura, stand up', 'Laura, it's all about confidence with you', 'That's it Laura'. Greg has now taken to calling Claire Laura whenever they go out surfing.