Auckland

Visiting and old friend with an old friend.

Monday 04 April 2016 – Auckland, New Zealand.

Like most bloggers I also follow and read a few other WordPress blogs and sporadically randomly read a few others. I like to see what is out there, what other people are seeing and doing and maybe get ideas about writing and photography for my own use. I recently read a post by a youngish guy, I think he was English, who had just left Auckland. He was moaning about how boring, expensive and unfriendly he thought New Zealand and specifically Auckland was. In between his moaning he described what he did in Auckland. Pretty much nothing, he never left the city. No wonder he was bored.

I, on the other hand, always get out of the city, and today was going to be one of those out of the city days. I had yet to see my good friend Vicki on this trip, there just hadn’t been time so far to fit enough time in, but I had kept a day up my sleeve just in case. Vicki and I usually catch up over a walk or a run somewhere in the hills, as I did not have a huge amount of time we decided to keep it semi-local and go to one of my favourite places in the whole world – Karekare Beach.

Karekare is on Auckland’s west coast, it has no shops, few houses and a toilet block was only built there in the last few years. It feels remote, yet it is under an hour from the centre of the city, less if there is no traffic on the very winding road. It is a magical place and I have been here to run, walk, swim and photograph many many times.

There was not going to be much running today, I am woefully unfit and Vicki is very very fit and would leave me for dead on the trails, but we had lots of gossiping to do so a good walk was definitely in order. We started walking along the black sand beach – following where we could find them, the trail markers for the Hillary Trail.

I have mentioned the Hillary in previous posts, it was created in honour of Sir Edmund Hillary, and is 75kms of interlinked trail traversing the Waitakere Ranges from South to North (or Vice Versa). When it was first created it was a rugged and gnarly walk using old hiking trails. Over the last few years, it is slowly being ‘dumbed down’ and made easier and safer – though it was never dangerous. This is to cater more for the walking tourist who may not necessarily want to get their boots dirty, well that is how it seems to me. This section along the beach did not exist when I left the country, the trail was back in the hills then.

Back in the old kauri logging days there used to be a train line running along this section of the coast, ferrying the great logs to Whatipu where ships used to take them into Auckland, the train line is long gone, but the old tunnel at Tunnel Point still remains, as does a rusting hulk of a cylinder.

I stopped to take a few photos of the small lake that has long been here, stuck between the sand dunes and the cliff face, over a rainy winter this whole area can flood as the water comes down from the hills and finds nowhere else to go.

One of the things I really love about New Zealand is, apart from some people, there is nothing dangerous, too bitey or poisonous living here. Wading barefoot and legged through a swampy flooded lake might not feel good on the feet, but at least no animal is going to try and kill you. Being the end of summer, there was no flood, and no need to wade barefoot through anything at all. The only life we saw were a couple of black swans.

We turned inland past the lake and headed up the start of the Pararaha Valley. The first hundred yards or so cuts through reed beds and the track is a low boardwalk. Designed to allow 365 day access to the area, though I have walked up here before when the boardwalk has been submerged as well.

And then it was UP ! Buck Taylor was always one of my least favourite tracks on a long run or walk, it is steep ! But the view back down over the entrance to the valley is always worth it.

I was surprised by how much mud there was when we got to the ridge line at the top, there wasn’t huge amounts, but I was surprised to find any at all, given that it is the end of summer. It was good to see the tracks here are still proper hiking tracks with mud and roots uneven steps. Just how I like it.

We followed Zion Ridge Track, it is pretty flat and a real joy to run on, the bush up here is really nice too, with lots of manuka, kauri and puriri trees leaving layers of crunchy leaves on the trail.

We came across this big old puriri tree, slowly being taken over by the vine like rata. It is a massive tree, ancient and twisted. Lovely.

Very soon we were on the cliff top overlooking Karekare Beach where we started. Looking back down the beach towards Pararaha Valley.

Karekare Beach.

Now you can see why this is one of my favourite places ! Beach, surf, hills, mud, trees, wilderness. What is there not to love about Karekare.

It was a great couple of hours out and about, Vicki is good company, a not too old friend, but one of my best friends and it was great to catch up. Vicki is the editor of Kiwi Trail Runner magazine and is very enthusiastic about anything trail and trail running. She gave me a couple of issues of the mag to take home with me as I was not quite up to date !!

She also stores my trail shoes at her house, to save me carting them back and forth from England. Now that is a true friend !

There are dreamscapes and realscapes.

Saturday 26 March – Tuesday 29 March 2016 – Auckland, New Zealand.

El and I arrived back in London two days ago. With my body clock completely wonky I was fully awake at 5:30am so spent some time in Lightroom and finished sorting through all the photos I took in New Zealand. After staring at completely blank pages where notes should have been written in my notebook, I suspect that this post will be quite short. It is a wrap up of all the days between doing other things, things that I will write about separately; in the not too distant future.

Our time in New Zealand was short, we only have 12 days in the country and for five of those days El and I are heading ‘up north’ on a wee road trip. I am really looking forward to that, getting out of the city is something I always want to do when I come back, and showing El more of the country I call(ed) home is exciting too. Of course, I am really looking forward to spending time with family and friends as well. With such a short time I am not going to see many of my friends unfortunately, but I expect to be back in November and will make more time for people then. If I didn’t see you this time round – I am sorry.

After a shaky start to the weather since we arrived on Thursday, Saturday morning broke nice and clear. I have rented a car for nine days and El and I caught the bus into the city to pick it up. We left nice and early and I got a bit of record shopping done on the way, picking up a new compilation LP of material from an old Dunedin Flying Nun band The Stones – I have no idea how they got away with that name! I also got two LPs by another Dunedin based Flying Nun band, The Clean. One of the LPs is a vinyl reproduction of a cassette that came out in 1982 – ‘Oddities’. I did not know this existed and I was so happy to pick it up, the cassette copy I had is long gone and the title track is my favourite The Clean song.

After shopping we dropped in to my daughter’s recently refurbished cafe for breakfast and coffee. The place was pretty busy, though the food was fabulous, and the coffee was good enough to want to have two. Mel and her halo 🙂

After breakfast we picked up the car and headed north to Orewa Beach to visit El’s only New Zealand based friend, an ex-work colleague from London. We arrived a little early so parked up and went for a walk along the beach, stopping for a half pint in a small bar. It is Easter Saturday today, when I was a kid Easter weekend was usually the last weekend you would expect to go for a swim, so it was pleasing to see people in the sea today. Actually, to be honest it was just pleasing to see the sea, the beach and the sun!

We had a good afternoon with El’s friends, I was driving so it was light beer for me!

On Sunday we moved to stay at my sisters house for a couple of nights, we had a family lunch and I managed to sneak a few more photos of Mason Smile , it was a great lunch and good to see my nephew and ex-brother-in-law as well.

Four generations of Platts… (and a Wither Hills pinot gris :))

I love my sisters house and after a nice walk – which I covered in the last post, El and I slobbed on the couch over a glass or two of pinot gris – a wine we drank a bit of while we were in NZ.

The sunset was pretty good too!

Monday was another fine day, now we had a car we headed back into town again, aiming for lunch with some friends. Unfortunately I got the day and the time all horribly wrong and there was no one home. We drove down to the waterfront, and up to the viewpoint at Achilles Point with its great view out over the harbour, the gulf and Rangitoto Island.

Some wonderful friends of mine had a BBQ at their place with a few of our other friends along for the fun. It was great to catch up with people again, a short but brief catch-up this time, and one of only two opportunities to catch up with friends.

On Tuesday El and I went back into the city again, we had coffee at Mel’s cafe again – it was nice enough to sit outside this time.

We then crossed over the road to Albert Park for a walk around the magnificent old trees there, really old Pohutakawa and Moreton Bay figs, I love these venerable old guardians of the park. When I get back to London I am going to look for a course on how to take photos of trees, something I want to get much better at.

On the edge of the park is the Auckland Art Gallery, I always visit when I come back, and this time was no exception. We did not have a huge amount of time, so did a quick pass through. I liked this giant web from John Ward Knox, though I missed an exhibition by Fiona Pardington which I am a bit annoyed about, she is a wonderful photographer.

We had arranged to meet mum for lunch down by the old ferry building and once united with her we walked out to the Wynyard Quarter, a more recent development along the waterfront. To think, that not six years ago I used to work just around the corner from here…

It was a really warm day and we found a nicely shaded table outside one of the many cafes that adorn this section of the harbour side. Lunch was excellent, washed down with yet another pinot gris. After eating too much we walked out to Silo Park, I used to come here to take photos a few years ago, especially on foggy mornings – but there was none of that today. I still like the lines and shapes made by the old silos.

Street artist Askew One, painted some of C.K. Stead’s poem ‘Auckland’ on the side of these tanks as part of the broader ‘Tank Art’ project. The title of this post is the opening line of the poem.

The next day El and I headed off on our road trip and I will write about that shortly, but we did have an awesome time away.

Visiting one of my happy places, the Waitakere Ranges.

Sunday 27 March 2016 – Auckland, New Zealand.

Breaking with a long held, and slightly ridiculous, tradition I am going to post some photos taken over a few days, but in the same general location. Over the four year history of this blog I have pretty faithfully stuck to writing in chronological order. This vexes me mightily on occasion; especially when I have a photo I want to post ‘right now’ but there is a backlog of older things to write about so I can stick to my self-imposed fascination with chronological order.

This process change is a bit of annoyance as I had written a whole load of text over the past few days that followed the right order of things, so now I am going to hit delete and get rid of it. I am going to rebel against myself. Maybe this will be the start of something new – non-date based blog posts, change is good right ?

Mum, El and I had arranged to meet my daughter Mel and her partner DIckie at the Arataki Centre in the Waitakere Ranges. The ranges are pretty much entirely forest (or bush as we call it in NZ) and form the bulk of a regional park running along the western edge of the city of Auckland, separating the city from the Tasman Sea. The ranges are why I love Auckland, I lived on the fringes of the forest before I went travelling and moved to London. The Arataki Centre is the information hub for the ranges and quite a tourist spot, with some lovely views out over the national park.

El and I visited the centre when we last came to New Zealand, but this time we are going to do the 1.6km nature walk. I haven’t done the walk since the kids were small and we had a horrible experience dragging small children up a steep path amongst some trees – they hated it, and made sure we did to. I was hoping for a lot more now I am doing the walk with adults, even if one of those adults was originally one of those kids.

I have always had a love of trees, but this has become a bit of an obsession over recent times, especially the naked winter trees I see in England. New Zealand native trees are primarily evergreen, so seeing tree skeleton forests in wintery England is something I am really fascinated by. There would be no tree skeletons today. Early autumn in the Waitakere Ranges means a sea of green; there are very few colours in a northern NZ forest!

The nature walk is on the other side of the road from the information centre and there is an underpass to get there. This sign was at the entrance to the tunnel. A message we need to think about as cities expand into wilderness areas and we deforest our world in the name of growth.

The thing that stood out for me the most in the walk was the kauri trees. They are my favourite NZ tree and get to be very big over time, the largest remaining kauri in New Zealand is Tane Mahuta and I am planning on seeing it when El and I take a trip up north in a few days time. Tane Mahuta is somewhere between 1200 and 2000 years old, this tree is about 600. Stupidly I forgot to note its name, thinking the internet would supply it for me when I got home. It appears the internet cannot.

It is a magnificent tree, but looks to be suffering. The Waitakeres, and large areas of other native forests are inflicted with Kauri Dieback, a fungal disease which is killing both young and old kauri. Once a tree has been infected there is no cure, and a number of un-logged kauri groves have been devastated, it is terribly sad. The kauri is a tall, straight hardwood tree and covered the Auckland and Northland regions. They were hugely popular with European house and ship builders when they arrived in the 1800s, which resulted in almost all the forests being wiped out by loggers, with only a few ancient trees remaining across the northern part of the country.

It is a really nice walk, quite steep in parts, but it is short so overall it is not too strenuous, we took the small detour at the furthest end from the car park to the kauri knoll to see a few, much younger kauri trees. Not all hope for these trees is lost!

Dickie, Mel, me and El

There are a few other interesting things to see, perhaps if we had walked along the trail with tree names I would know what this rather interesting plant is called.

The New Zealand bush in the north island is sub-tropical, it is predominantly evergreen, and is pretty much entirely green in colour, there are very few plants that have bright flowers or berries.

The rata tree is an exception with lovely red flowers.

It was a very nice walk, and given we were outside for only a short time and it was not particularly sunny, it was all a bit hot and sweaty!

A couple of days later El and I had moved to stay at my sister’s house in Titirangi, she has only recently moved in and has renovated extensively, it is a lovely space to live, and is surrounded by immature kauri trees.

These three kauri are right outside the back door and the deck is built around them.

After the family had left after a very nice lunch El, my sister and I went for a walk around the block. (I will sneak a quick after lunch Mason photo just because I can. It is my blog after all)

A walk round the block where my sister lives is nothing like a walk round the block where El and I live in suburban London. There are some houses, she is very close to the city after all, but there is plenty of not-houses as well. Exhibition drive is a flat, gravel road that runs from the edge of Titirangi out towards the dams in the Waitakere Ranges. It is about 3.25km long, is closed to all motor vehicles and was a very regular running track for me. It is popular with walkers, and forms part of a good loop to walk from my sister’s house.

The road is used for service vehicles that monitor the pipes that run water from the dams to a nearby water treatment station.

The pipe runs fairly straight so there are lots of short tunnels on the way, when I was young you could walk/crawl through them, health and safety means they are all blocked off now.

The path is through a very scruffy, and regenerating part of the forest, it is a lovely walk, especially on a sunnyish day like today – and especially after a large lunch!

As the large trees were cut down a long time ago the lower level trees and scrub have taken off here and there are a large number of nikau palm and punga trees all along the walk.

I was looking for a bit of flare action through the nikau palm leaves.

I am fascinated by how the palm fronds appear to interlace with each other, forming patchworks of shadow and light.

I really like these roots, I think they are from an old macracarpa tree. I have photographed them before, may years ago, and I was pleased to see they were still intact, popping out of the bank below the tree, merging with the rock and the hard old clay.

We cut down a steep, and considering it is the end of summer, surprisingly muddy track down to a newer pipeline, and short cut back home. Not many people know about this section of pipeline, I found it years ago, when I was looking for short tracks to ride a mountain bike in this semi-urban area.

We were soon back at my sisters after another really enjoyable walk, in one of my favourite forests, and time for a glass of pinot gris before dinner.

To New Zealand. (Warning – this post contains gratuitous grandchild photos.)

Thursday 24 March 2016 – Auckland, New Zealand.

It has been an interesting few weeks since I last mentioned looking for a flat to buy, or made any visits to Folkestone, the main location I was looking at flats in. It has been a slow start to the year at work and I have been a little nervous about getting a mortgage I could not afford to pay if I was suddenly out of work. I have taken a break from flat hunting until things become more certain. I am a little disappointed that I have had take a break from finding my own place, but it has also been good to take a break. My three day weekends are my own again!

Earlier in the year El and I booked return tickets to New Zealand, it has been almost a year since I was last there and 24 months since we were there together. Like all visits this was to be short, and hopefully sweet. We had 12 days in New Zealand followed by three days in Hong Kong on the way back to London. It is a lot of money, but it will be good to see family and friends.

With so much on at work we have employed a contract applications analyst who will cover for me while I am away, and then do the grunt support work when I return, so I can concentrate on some projects that are coming up. It has been so busy these last few weeks I have been really looking forward to the break!

I have also been looking forward to some nice weather too, we have had a pretty mild winter in London, no snow (yet), so it has not been too cold, but it has been grey and damp and the thought of 21 degrees in Auckland was very exciting. Naturally, the day we left London was glorious.

Our flight left London on Tuesday evening, we had a day at work to contend with, which is never fun, and even less fun was lugging big suitcases on the tube through rush hour traffic. We left home at 7:00, hoping there would be less people than 7:30. There seemed to be more, oh well – at least the walk to the station was nice.

We flew Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong, it was a full flight, and unusually for me I slept for four or five hours of the 11 hour flight. I was quite happy with that outcome. El has a much worse flight than me, poor girl. Mine was aided by a couple of red wines at the Heathrow before the flight. I watched a bit of inflight TV – most of season 6 of Archer, and one movie. The entertainment options were not too bad. We had just under two hours in HK airport, we stay here for two days on the way back to London and I am really looking forward to that – especially after my last ill fated visit to the city. It was all looking rather grey out of the airport window.

I didn’t realise the flight on to London was code-shared and on an Air New Zealand plane, I may have planned differently and grabbed a few more Air NZ air miles for next time. I recently found out I am going to be a grandfather again, my oldest son and middle child, Dom’s partner is expecting in October. He lives in Aussie and sadly I will not see him on this trip. I will come back to NZ and Aussie once the baby is born, hopefully using some air points to either improve the flight or reduce the cost.

We were seated over the wing on both flights, which meant there was no spectacular view out the window – a waste of a window seat really ! I put the camera away after taking this picture, didn’t seem to be much point.

We left the terminal slightly late and missed our take off spot, this ended up with a massive delay in leaving and we were in the plane for over an hour before take off. It really adds to the joy that is long distance travel ! it was another very full plane, El had a better flight than me this time, so I guess we were even !! The 10 half hours to Auckland seemed to take forever, possibly because we lost a day – we left on Tuesday and arrived on Thursday morning. Wednesday failed to exist for us. We did watch the movie Wild, which I have been wanting to see, I also watched the final Hunger Games movie, the second Divergent series movie and four episodes of the TV series Blindspot. Got them all out of the way, though none were on any particular must watch list.

We landed on time fortunately and ever more fortunately had a quick trip through customs and out in to the arrival hall where my mum was waiting. It was really good to see mum again ! We haven’t Skyped for a while, and of course we have not seen each other since I was last here almost a year ago.

Unlike London, Auckland was grey and warm – 21 degrees and quite humid. We were, apparently, very lucky to have just missed a really bad storm that blew through over night. With heavy rain and high winds it would have made for a lousy approach and landing, and I really hate those !!

We are staying at mum’s place for a few nights, and not long after we arrived my youngest son, Aiden arrived with his son, and my grandson Mason who is about 20 months. He was a little cautious about these strangers for about the first two minutes, but soon settled in to playing and interacting with us. It must be unusual to see me face to face when he would normally only see me on the computer screen, I was very much out of context.

He is a delightful wee boy, and very hard to take a photo of…. he loves cars, bikes and trucks. Like most boys his age I expect.

Mason takes his food very seriously.

Aiden is teaching him to pull faces, a skill that he will obviously need later in life.

Aiden and Mason left soon after an early dinner, I was falling asleep on the couch by 7:30 and ended up being soundly asleep in bed by 8:30. I had a great, and very unexpected sleep too!

Lovely to see mum, Aiden and Mason today and looking forward to seeing my daughter, Mel and her partner, Dickie tomorrow.

A quick family catch up in New Zealand.

Sunday 21 June 2015 – London.

I have been back in London from my quick trip back to New Zealand for over four weeks now and this is my first attempt at writing about the visit. I have been busy again with work, and we have had some lovely English summer evenings that have been perfect for an after dinner walk – but really it has just been a hard post to write. It is not getting easier with time either, my feelings towards the country in which I was brought up are very mixed now. I loved seeing my family and friends, but I hated the central part of Auckland, was ambivalent about the rest and felt very disconnected from the place. It was as if I did not belong in the city anymore.

Maybe it was the fact it was a short trip, that I was jet lagged and tired for most of the time I was there, who knows. I knew it was not going to be a ‘fun’ trip before I left, but I found it far more draining than I expected.

I arrived on Friday 12^th at 5:00 am, after three mostly reasonable flights via Dubai and Melbourne. I would not normally elect to fly with an airline that makes two stop offs, but I had old air points with Qantas which were slowly disappearing with age so thought I would use them to get an upgrade to premium economy on the trip to NZ. It made a huge difference and I really liked the leg to Dubai, great flight. I witnessed a sad experience at Melbourne airport security as one of the officials was screaming at (I think) an Indonesian couple who obviously had limited English as they tried to take a stroller through the security gate. He was a miserable prick, and a classic example of what I hate about Australia.

It was great to see my mum as I walked out into the arrival hall, I was very appreciative of her coming out so early on a Friday to collect me! I spent the morning with mum and after a brief rest went in to Auckland city to do my shopping and visit my daughter at work. I was staying at a mates place near the centre of the city and was lucky to have a car again for the entire time I was there. You have to have a car in Auckland, much as I want to use public transport, it is a bit shit – especially compared to London.

It is early winter in NZ in June, though the weather for the trip, in the main was pretty good, though Friday was miserable, windy and wet, and I was miserable with it. I really hated the city centre again, no soul, no spirit and not the place I enjoyed. The shops I frequented over many years, like Whitcoulls on Queen St and (tears) Real Groovy Records are closing, Real Groovy so another hideous, unnecessary and stupid tower can be built, though fortunately it just moving. I did get some great second hand records though!

Though not all was changing, I was after a couple of books and managed to get both of them at my favourite Auckland book shop Unity Books, and I was so pleased it was still there on High St.

My daughter works in a lovely new organic cafe on Victoria St, and I was very excited to be able to go and see her for lunch on my first day, wonderful to see her smiley face.

I walked up to the top of town to visit a new record shop Flying Out records, I was after some new NZ music, but ended up with two English albums Smile Loved the store though.

And back down again through Myers Park, one of the few highlights of the city centre.

It was way too early to turn up at my friends place for dinner, so I stopped at Mission Bay on Auckland’s beautiful, glorious, wonderful waterfront for a glass of pinot and to catch a traditional photo of Rangitoto Island.

I stayed the night at my friends place with the plan of going for a mountain bike ride on the Saturday morning. I awoke with a mild hangover and to some lousy windy and rainy weather. Mountain biking was off, not sure if I was happy or sad with that.

Once the weather had settled I decided to head out to Piha just to get sand between my toes and to enjoy a brunch at the Piha Cafe. The cafe was full when I arrived so I settled for some lovely cold sand between my toes. Living in London I don’t get to visit the beach that much, and I do miss the easy access to these lovely wild beaches I had when I lived here.

My little red car.

I stayed at my sister’s house over the weekend, she moved here last year and has a really nice small growth of young kauri trees out the back. Lovely!

I also managed to spend lots of time with my family, including my grandson Mason. I see him on Skype fairly regularly,

I spent the rest of the trip staying with my mum and seeing my family as much as possible. Apart from a day out walking on Monday, which I posted about previously the rest of the trip was busy with jobs and organising things.

I have finally committed to moving the last of my stuff from New Zealand to London, there was not a whole lot of stuff left, and the cost of shipping all of it versus shipping most of it was negligible so I organised for a shipping company to come round and pick up the lot. I will finally have my records and my turntable in the same country as me.

On Thursday night I went out for dinner with some friends and my daughter and NZ based son, the kids and I then went to Whammy Bar and the Wine Cellar to see my nephew the drummer in the band ‘Heroes for Sale’. I have never seen them play so it was awesome to get to go to a gig while I was here, they were pretty damn cool.

Friday the 19^th was the reason I came to NZ, it is Mason’s first birthday, and my oldest son is coming over from Australia for the weekend. I didn’t do too much during the day, final organisation and a last bit of shopping before going to pick up son from the airport to take him to my daughters house and for the first time in a couple of years I got to see all my children together in the same place.

Saturday we had a family party for Mason, firstly at my daughters and then at my mums. I think he had a good time! I am not sure about those dodgy moustaches though !

And then Sunday, it was brunch with the family, before taking my son to the airport and then heading their myself. 8 days and my trip was over.

My journey home was the reverse of the trip out, with stop offs in Melbourne and Dubai. I had another mini-drama in Melbourne when I left my glasses on the plane after they fell out of my pocket. I was in a mild panic in the airport as I had visions (blurry) of 20 hours of flights to London not being able to read or watch movies, but fortunately Qantas managed to reunite my glasses with me before we left. Well done Qantas !

I loved Dubai airport.

It was good trip to New Zealand, really busy, so no proper holiday – I look forward to that at the end July.

It was great to see my family, especially to have all the kids and my grandson together in the same place at the same time. I was disappointed in NZ, I don’t like the politics there and I was disappointed in what I read in the papers and saw on TV news about the state of the country and the attitudes of some of the people. Auckland seems lifeless and desolate and will only get worse as they build more flats and apartments for overseas buyers who leave them empty, driving more people out of the centre of the city. Thank God for the west coast beaches, the Waitakere Ranges, the bush and my friends and family.

A stroll in the bush

Monday 15 June 2015 – Auckland, New Zealand.

I have been in New Zealand for three days and have pretty much had no sleep since arriving. A combination of strange beds – three nights and three different beds, and trying to sleep when I should be getting up for work has not been helped by my failure to sleep easily. So I am tired.

I have had a good couple of days so far, I have completed all the shopping I need to do, cuddled my grandson and seen all of my Auckland based family and some of my friends. It feels like I haven’t stopped, but in reality it has all been a fairly static trip so far. I was going to go for mountain bike ride on Saturday morning but the weather conspired against us, today was going to be a trail run but Vicki, who I was to run with, had a monster race over the weekend so we decided to make it a walk instead. It suited me, as I said before I was tired.

The original idea was to run up Mt Pirongia in the Waikato, a spectacular run/walk that I have not done, but seeing as we were not going run it seemed a bit silly to get up before dawn to drive for a couple of hours just to walk. We decided to head to an old favourite, Piha – where there is good coffee as well as good trails.

Piha is not my favourite beach on Auckland’s west coast, it is a close second to Karekare. However, Piha was one of my favourite places to trail run. Wonderful trails with awesome views and the bonus of a great cafe where turning up looking for coffee covered in mud and smelling a bit was not overly frowned upon.

Disappointing as it was, with hindsight, walking rather than running was a good idea. I have hardly run in weeks and Vicki has been knocking out fast paced ultra-marathons like they are going out of business. There was no way I would have survived a run like Pirongia. Walking meant we could natter for longer – including up the many climbs, and nattering is something we do best on our runs.

We had decided on a nice loop from the end of Glen Esk Rd, that captures all the good things about this section of the Waitakeres – a nice stream, kauri trees, some views and some glorious twisty, rooty single track.

Kauri die-back is a serious issue for the Waitakere Ranges – as well as other areas of native forest in the north of New Zealand. Kauri Dieback is caused by a fungus like disease that is killing kauri trees, it was only discovered in 2008. It is a spore that that gets into the roots of the tree, spreading up and eventually killing the tree, trees of all ages are affected and it is thought to be spread by animals, birds and humans. There are numerous spray stations around the park.

Like a lot of the waterways in the park in the early 19^th century the Piha stream was dammed and then used to float kauri logs down to logging mills on the coast. The remains of some of the dams can still be found in various locations.

We headed up Centennial track from Piha Valley track.

There are still a couple of fun sections on the trail, yet to be made day tripper friendly…

With a rewarding view down the valley.

Vicki had been telling me about the work the council had been doing on ‘maintaining’ some of the tracks, especially those on the Hillary Trail, the 85km long section of trails made famous by Sir Ed Hillary. This basically means widening the trail, removing anything remotely challenging and then covering the track in gravel, – thus removing half the fun of bush walking, but making the trails easier for those who don’t want to get dirty I guess. On the Forbes Trail it was pleasing to see they had not been every where !

Our final trail was the Maungaroa Ridge track, one of my favourite trails.

It is a great running trail, especially going anti-clockwise as there is more downhill, there are also some really nice kauri sections and it was lovely to see they are all still standing.

There is a look out just off to the side of the trail before it drops back down to Glen Esk Rd and back where we started.

And back over where we had just walked.

The Piha Cafe was closed due to a power outage, which was a real bummer, so Vicki and I headed back into Titirangi for a late lunch in one of the many cafes there.

It was a really nice day out, great to catch up with Vicki and share each others news and solve all of life’s issues.

Ten days in New Zealand.

Thursday 17 July 2014 – Auckland, New Zealand.

After a fairly relaxing weekend away near Donnington Castle. about two hours out of London I spent the following Monday morning doing a final pack before heading off to Heathrow airport for a two week trip back home to New Zealand, and a final couple of days visiting my oldest son in Queensland, Australia. I had vaguely planned my departure to be after the one time when I would be really close to somewhere where the Tour de France was passing by, sadly I had gotten the time completely wrong and the lead riders were due to pass through Walthamstow as I was due to be heading to the airport, Doh !

I am not one to sleep on planes, I have trouble enough sleeping in bed, let alone planes, and though the flight from London to Singapore was in the evening and was reasonably comfortable I did not really doze much more than a few minutes at a time over a number of attempts – I did watch some bad movies though – and once I arrived in New Zealand found I had left my e-reader in the plane. (Yay to Singapore Airlines, they are sending my e-reader to London for me to collect !)

Changi Airport in Singapore is an interesting place, I was there for four hours so had a pretty thorough look around terminal three, If I had not been so damn full after eating at least three meals in the past twelve hours I would have been up there eating some lovely noodles like a shot.

I was less tempted by the pokie machines though. I have never seen gambling in an airport before!

The airport is pretty massive, and I walked a good ten minutes up to where my flight to Auckland was to depart from, only to find it had moved, almost the same distance away in the opposite direction. It was good to stretch out with a walk though.

But, there was a lovely sunset to make it all worthwhile.

I arrived in Auckland mid afternoon on Wednesday, what seems like two days after I left London. The primary reason for my trip this time was to see my new grandson, unnamed at the time I left and I was thrilled to see him when my son, Aiden, brought him around to my mum’s house after work on the day I arrived. We had a lovely family dinner that night and it was great to see everyone, and I got my first hold of my first grandson – Luca Ken (Ken was my late father’s name, it brought a tear to my eye when I found out) . Yes, it was pretty damn cool!

I hadn’t really planned anything beyond seeing family, apart from sorting through some of the stuff I have stored at my brother-in-laws house, disposing of the stuff to be disposed of, and maybe sneaking some vinyl into a bag and taking it back to London.

I spent the first couple of days relaxing and hanging out with my children and on Friday I took a trip down to Mt Te Aroha for a very windy bit of outdoors adventure with my friend Vicki.

With most of my friends working during the week I had a fairly full weekend of catching up with people and took a trip with old friend Chantal,out to Piha on Auckland’s west coast , which is my favourite part of Auckland and the one part of the city I miss. The weather was not the friendliest but we did get to walk along the beach for a bit between the showers, and had a pretty good lunch at Piha Cafe.

In the afternoon I had a great catch up with some friends I met many years ago via Flickr. I missed seeing them last time I was in Auckland, and I really enjoyed our brief couple of hours together – next time we must go and spend some time taking some photos. We had coffee in a couple of cafes including this lovely cafe on K Rd, It looks to be part of a closed theatre but I cannot place one there.

I also took a quick walk around to look at some of the limited range, but quite cool street art in the area.

On Monday mum and I took a trip out to Muriwai Beach, another one of my best loved Auckland locations, dad’s ashes are scattered here and we always come out for a visit when I am in Auckland.

That was pretty much it for the week, I spent two days organising my stuff, visited the kids a few times, hung out with some friends and saw my sisters my lovely new house.

On my last day I went for a walk around mums ‘hood in Henderson. The council here have done a great job over the years in building and linking up walking paths that snake around the greener areas of the suburb, taking walking and cycling off of busy – and in some cases ugly, light industrial roads. Mum walks these regularly and it was nice to get out for a couple of walks while I was staying with her – especially on such a nice morning, cool though it was.

We walked through Tui Glen which is now a park, but back in the 1970’s it was a caravan park village and we lived here, in this small home when we first arrived in New Zealand from England in the summer of 1973. We stayed here for a few weeks while my parents found jobs and a place to set down roots. I will say it was the most unhappy time for me and I suspect all of us. A lot of the flats have been knocked down, but some like this one – now called Glen Oaks have been preserved.

I had to take a photo of this mill house in Henderson it is 170 years old and an historic place. After recently walking on Roman ruins from almost a thousand years ago in London, I do find it so amusing that anything of a century old in Auckland is considered historic – though it will never get to be a thousand years old if they are not preserved now!

And that was pretty much the end of my NZ trip. I did buy myself a new camera, this time I have gone for a more traditional point and shoot style with a Canon G16. Time to replace my Lumix’s. I won’t say I will miss the GX1, I found it too frustrating to use in the end, but the GF1 served me very well all around South East Asia.

Next stop Brisbane, and my other son Dom. Yay!

My Grandson….

Friday 18 July 2014 – Auckland, New Zealand.

I am going to act like some large multi-national corporations do with UK tax law and act within the wording of the rules, but ignore the spirit of them. Just like Amazon doesn’t pay tax in the UK because it does not sell anything there – all 7 billion pounds of UK sales come out of Ireland**, I am going to put some photos of my new grandson here, which will be linked to FaceBook, though no photos will actually be on Facebook 🙂

His name is yet to be officially recorded in the book of births, but I have been assured it will not change (probably) so here is Luca Ken Platt, born on 19th June, two weeks early.

I am going to say I was not overly excited about the prospect of being a granddad at only 51, but my heart melted when I had my first cuddle and looked into his blankly staring little eyes. He is really lovely and I am very proud of my son Aiden and his partner.

These photos were taken over a few days during my ten day visit to Auckland. I am writing this at the airport as I wait for my flight to Brisbane to see my other son, Dom, before heading back to London on Monday. I miss them all already !

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Luca and my mum.

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Aiden and his sister, Mel.

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I had forgotten what it is really like to hold such a small, vulnerable life in my hands, the little wriggly strength, the squishy faces they pull and the strange rumbles as they fill their nappy. It is pretty magical, and I look forward to holding him again.

He is not really ginger – not of course there is anything wrong with that ! I have finally got sick of my Lumix Gx1, was disappointed with the quality of the shots of Luca so went out and bought a new Canon G16 yesterday and I will sell the Gx1 when I get back to London. Too late for baby photos this time!

** The numbers may or may not be fact…

Friday 07 February 2014 – Auckland, New Zealand.

My plan to blog most days and get a good written and visual record of El’s and my trip to NZ was doomed to fail from the very start – too many things to do and not enough down time planned. I did, however, expect to get at least a couple of posts done while I was actually ‘in country’. I am now over a week back in London and have just sat down to write something about NZ. At least I have been through the rather meagre collection of photos I took on the trip and selected the best of an average bunch, so there is something to base my report on other than slowly fading memories.

I will say the trip was really good, I was a little nervous about, especially introducing El to my family. They are all lovely so I was not expecting any issues, but I was not 100% sure on how it would go. I should never have been concerned; the kids were fab and El lovely. We were also blessed with pretty good weather – apart from Wellington where it was cool and wet, the windy city certainly lived up to its name. It was also colder than London was on the ferry across to the south island! Thankfully the rest of the trip was mostly completed under warm sunny skies – just what was needed coming from grey damp London.

El and I stayed at my mum’s place for a couple of nights, she gave up her room for us, which was much appreciated and it was nice to be able to relax in one place for a day or two. My mum walks for an hour most mornings before breakfast so I was up early on the Monday and out for an hour long power stroll around the nicer bits of Henderson – not really one of Auckland’s lovelier suburbs I will admit, though the park areas and interlinked stream side path ways make for a decent and reasonably car-free walk and it was nice to spend some time with mum.

My brother-in-law, Allan, had kindly lent us a car for the week we were in town so after breakfast we headed off up the north western motorway to Muriwai Beach so mum and I could show El one of our favourite NZ spots, and one of the few places I really do miss.

After watching the waves from the king tide banging on the rocks we took a walk up to the gannet colony at the top of the cliffs before Maori Bay. The gannets have mostly gone for the season, just a few stragglers left, but enough to see and plenty of gannet noise going on.

After lunch we met my daughter and her partner for lunch at the Hallertau Brewery. This was El and my first introduction back into eating out in NZ and it was really good. I must say that the quality of the food and service has really stepped up in the last few years, almost without exception we had fantastic dining experiences everywhere we went – even small and remote (though touristy) locations like Farewell Spit. No more bad tea and soggy ham and cheese sandwiches.

The following day was another food fest, we caught the ferry over to Waiheke Island to visit a vineyard or two and have some lunch. The ride over to Waiheke is all part of the experience and the Waitemata Harbour and inner Hauraki Gulf were as gorgeous as always, with Rangitoto lurking under cloud in the background.

We arrived on Waiheke later than planned and started (and ended) our experience at Mud Brick Cafe. I have been here before and it has always been a great spot, the food was fabulous, the wine tasty and fresh, El loved it, so there was no need to move on.

The vege sharing plate for lunch – OMG !!

Heading back into the city just seemed wrong – and the clouds certainly agreed !

On Wednesday we had breakfast in the newly completed Wynard Quarter on Auckland’s waterfront. The renovation project had started before I left NZ at the end of 2011, but was no where near complete at the time. I must say it is pretty damn cool, and breakfast was great too. I really liked the new buildings in this area, even the bank had come to the party with a really funky office.

We had a fairly major walking day planned and visited the Auckland City Art Gallery, which I love. My favourite painting Robyn White’s “Fish and Chips, Maketu” was sadly not on display, but I really liked this massive Ralph Hotere piece.

After lunch El and I walked up to K’Rd and then across Grafton Bridge to the Auckland Museum. I must pause the narrative to comment on how disappointed I was at the changes to some of my favourite shopping streets. High St particularly and K’ Rd to a degree have all changed since I was last here. I really liked the little boutiques on High St, but now it just seems full of sushi shops, sad. We were to be further disappointed when we arrived at Auckland Museum, I wanted to show El the Maori history section, but there was a $25 entrance fee for non-residents. WTF !!! This is insane… We spent $8 each and visited a reasonably good history of fashion photography exhibition instead. We got to pose in front of a couple of backdrops with some good lighting to have a play. Sadly I was not that fashionable…

Seriously disappointed at the cost of entry to the museum, that really sucked.

We stayed at my brother in law’s house for the next few nights which again we appreciated, it was good being able to unload all the stuff out of the suitcase and lob it around the floor – well that was me anyway. The boys came round for tea on the Wednesday night which was great, it was so good to see so much of them while I was in town.

On Thursday morning my youngest son came around and we went for a big walk up to the Arataki Centre on Scenic Drive, the views out over the Manukau Harbour and the dam and bush are fantastic and the centre has some good information on the lovely Waitakere Ranges – my favourite part of NZ. Later on El and I drove out to one of the many ranges beach, Piha for a walk but it was really windy and not entirely pleasant on the beach so we didnt stay for long. We were planning on having lunch at the Piha Cafe, but it was closed as it was a public holiday, grrrrr. We drove on over to Karekare beach, Karekare is my favourite part of my favourite place, I love the fact that there are no shops, not many houses and that the carpark is not right by the beach. Time and energy have to be invested in getting to this lovely expanse of black sand beach, therefore not that many people go there. I have a million photographs of it (lots anyway).

After the beach we walked to the falls over the road, as it is the end of summer, there was not a huge flow of water, but they are still wonderful…

Friday was a bit of a rest and organisation day, we had a small mission in the afternoon – I went record shopping at Real Groovy Records and picked up five bits of NZ vinyl, mostly second hand. A friend of my brother in law was talking about a new venture down at the end of town. A shipping container had been converted into a wine tasting and blending shop so we went to check Blend out. The idea is you get to taste a few grape varieties and then have three goes at blending them into a blend that you really like. You then get a bottle of it to take away. It was such a cool idea and a bit of fun. I ended up with a red made up of 50% cab sauv, 30% merlot and 20% grenache. Not sure I would buy it in the shops mind, but we have brought them back to London and will drink them soon. A very cool idea indeed.

After Blend we moseyed back on out west and went to a BBQ with a group of my old Titirangi friends which was just perfect. We just did not have the time to visit people on this trip so seeing a group all at once was great. It was a good evening, thanks Martha 🙂 I had a run planned the following day so kept it all quite tame.

Saturday was our final day in Auckland, and I had arranged to go bush running with my friend Vicki. She had a pre-run run organised so we didn’t meet up until mid-day which was appreciated 🙂 I dropped El off at a friend of mine’s house as she was going on a shopping mission to the main boutiquey type areas of Ponsonby and Newmarket – work related research apparently, while I was out getting muddy.

It was a great run, up from Karekare beach.

Across the top of Mercer Bay.

Down past Kitekite falls and into Piha.

It was interesting to see all the changes to the tracks as the council is ‘upgrading’ a lot of the trails that make up the “Hillary Trail”, I can understand why they are doing it, but it does sort of ruin some of the fun, and makes it so much less exclusive ! It was a great run, nice to catch up with Vicki and try to solve the world’s problems as we ran. Much as I love London, I do miss running the Waitakeres !

El and I took mum, my boys and my bro-in-law out for tea on the Saturday night to thank them for their hospitality. We went to Mikano on the waterfront and it was fabulous – and the most I have ever spent in a restaurant, lucky none of us were drinking ! It was a lovely night, and a great way to cap our week in Auckland.

All Fresco – K’ Rd Street Art festival

Sunday 05 May 2013 – Auckland

I had been casually looking around for street art in Auckland and hand not really had a lot of success so I resorted to good old Google to see what I could find. I was so glad I did as there was a street art festival on and around Karangahape Rd from 3-5 May, which was now…

I arranged to meet a friend and photographer Katharina in a cafe so we could walk around together, look at the work and take some pictures. As it was a Sunday I managed to get a park on Cross St, right near one of the walls being painted. It rained – heavily, almost as soon as I got out of my car !

Mica Still – painting in the rain.

I ran up through the rain to St Kevins Arcade for lunch with Kats until the rain had stopped and then we went for a walk. First stop was down the stairwell at the back of the arcade. There is a fair amount of painting here, some is old and some is new, and most of it is great ! I cannot tell you who the artists are though there is a Gasp! and I think a Component or two. If anyone stumbles upon this post and can help out that would be great.

Out of the side door of the arcade we found a couple of pieces on the there, again I am not sure who they are by, but the tiger is beautiful – and very well hidden. Th K’ Rd Masive have been painting here, but I could not get a decent shot of the wall as a truck was parked there.

While we were looking at this lovely shadow play we met some people who gave us a map of all the All Fresco paintings which was just great – well done to the organisers for doing a map – as well as organising the festival!

We took a walk down one side of K’ Rd and back up the other, most of the work was in side streets. Starting with Haha in Pitt St. All done by stencil.

Gasp ! had a piece on Bereford Sq.

Next was Wert 159 still working in Samoa House Lane, you can see where the rain had been washing some of the colour down the wall 😦

And TrustMe

Walking to the next site we passed this alley which had quite a bit of interesting stuff to look at, including another Trustme. There was not enough space to fit it all in, but it says “We drink to forget our nights to remember”, I liked that.

On Hereford St there was this amazing piece, the scales were a cityscape, but did not translate well under my camera.

There was also this piece hidden behind a wall.

There was a large wall with a cherry picker on it on the corner of Gundry St but the artist must have given up in the rain as there was no one home and not much paint on the wall. I felt sorry for the artists, it was not a good weekend to be painting on the streets.

Edinburgh St and West Terrace had Jonny 4Higher pieces

And we found this on a wall down the back of Edinburgh, I do like all these sort of hidden things.

And then back to where I started on Cross St and thankfully the rain had stopped so Mica Still could finish her work before jumping on a plane back to Wellington.

Mica was sharing a wall with Xoe Hall and Erin Forsyth who were doing a joint piece that was just fabulous. I loved the skull moths.

Xoe Hall.

Erin Forsyth

And finally I found this up an alley – love it !

It was a great day out, thanks Kats for keeping me company and a massive thanks to all those involved in setting it up, to those fabulous property owners who allowed out city to be a bit brighter and happier and to the artists who contributed their work !