A trip
With my love of mountains, rivers, lakes, beaches and maps (which they’ve endured all these years) – guess what they organised? A day-long trip, all piling into Martin’s 10-seater van, through local mountains to a river, a lake and a beach. Loved it.

The mountains? 
The Ruahines

On a spectacular spring morning we drove up behind Palmerston North into the Ruahine range which form a central mountain spine in New Zealand’s lower North Island. Not exactly Himalayan and not exactly photo-able (as the sun was rising above them) – but I did my best. Oh, how I miss New Zealand’s velvet green farmland when I am overseas…

The river? 
The Pohangina

This was new to me. I’d never driven this road before, as we followed alongside the Pohangina river on its way down to meet the Manawatu river just east of Palmerston North. We stopped here and there, both to admire the beauty of the surroundings and to indulge in some irresistibly competitive stone-throwing with my sons.

The lake? 
Horowhenua

‘People of Levin, you have some work to do! Your lake and its surroundings are a bit of a dump.’ Not much more than a pond and a pretty dirty one at that. Golly gosh, I hope no one from the Lake District (UK) sees this, as they live in another world. Lake Horowhenua could be so much more. I did my best to find a ‘best side’ and to take a photo of it …

… but the city redeemed itself by being the home of the RJ’s Licorice factory shop. Suddenly, our trip became about mountain, river, licorice and ocean. I had known the factory was in the town, but I had never stopped for a look – or a taste. The queue in the little shop was long and became a bit like a roundabout. The prices were cheap, the options were varied and we went round the roundabout more than once.

The ocean?
Foxton Beach

This is a bit of an unheralded beach in New Zealand. In all my driving around the country in previous jobs I’ve never bothered to check it out. I was put off doing so by the unimaginative sign which drivers had to endure for years as we entered the town: ‘Foxton: the Fox Town’. Yes, I know – it is hard to believe. But this is now the second time we’ve been to the beach with the grandchildren. Watching them run in and out of the waves, while enjoying vistas of both beach and water stretching to the horizon makes for quite a sight (even if the sun, once again, is at the wrong angle for photos!).

As has been his custom, my long-time friend, Mark Grace, just happened to be passing by (I keep bumping into him in random places when we make visits home), and his daughter, Hannah, kindly agreed to take a family photo as we were finishing off our fish ‘n chips on the grass outside the legend which is Mr Grumpys Takeaways at Foxton Beach. Here we all are.

A suitcase
On the night before our road trip, the kids plonked a grubby ol’ suitcase, with fading Qantas stickers on it, on the coffee table in front of me – complete with a mischievous ‘kinda like the art of unpacking, eh?’ commentary from my daughter, Alyssa.

I opened it.

nice chatting

Paul

PS: My brief two-week visit home was for ‘a birth and a birthday’. This was the birthday, but at the time of writing, there is still no birth. It is disappointing because we have no plans to be home again until April and I have only two days left. But here are the sisters doing their bit, the older one still interceding, even as the younger one seems to be fist-pumping in praise of the living God.

STOP PRESS: Just an hour or so after the sun set on the day I wrote this post, little Daisy Joy was born. It all happened so quickly in the end – and now I have a couple of days to get acquainted before heading away again.