I just got this in an email: A friend has asked me to take some of their wedding photos with their Canon 1000D. Had a play with it yesterday and I’m finding the flash a bit harsh. Is there a top tip to minimise this? Firstly, if you’re using the camera in the day near natural light, the camera will be fine and it’s all down to your artistic flair. ...
Firstly Happy Birthday to Tony, again. Sorry we sent you your birthday card a month early and sorry this message will be very belated as I am so behind on my blogs we probably will be back home before you get to read this. Hope you had a good one. We had a pleasant day celebrating Tony’s birthday, our 250th day on the road and over 2000km travelled in NZ. Began with brekkie by Lake Mahinapua. ...
Miserable weather today. Drizzling and grey. It’s like being back in the UK. The weather cannot make up its mind. Except that, unlike the UK in winter, when it’s sunny it’s hot. 1696 to 1824km Westport to Greymouth Drove to Cape Foulwind where you can walk 4km to the Seal Colony. Ambled to a boring lighthouse and back which took us at least 10 mins and watched some what we thought might be Kiwis (type: bird) but are in fact Wekas (have more recently found out that Kiwis are really rare) fighting over bread I threw for them. ...
1422 to 1531km Left the Nelson I-Site carpark early again to land at Lake Rotoroa for brekkie overlooking lake & mountains. 1532 to 1694km The road to Westport through Buller’s Gorge was another impressive route. Stopped off at “Buller’s Swingbridge”. The longest swingbridge in NZ. You pay $5 to cross it and can pay lots more to take a “Flying Fox” back across. The wire swingbridge is across a wide river full of rapids and is quite good. The walk around the old gold-mining area is boring. The Flying Fox to us looked like a waste of money and too home-made. The ziplines at home in Go Ape I think are more exhilarating. ...
Gave Matt a break from driving and I did it all today. Why I chose the one day we had to drive 10km on gravel track 1.5 cars wide is beyond me. Still we survived. Left our exciting car park nice and early (well 7:30) to go to Totaranui beach at the north-western tip of the Abel Tasman national park. Because it was an unsealed road for 10km it took bloody ages and wound round and round, left and right up and down. We almost gave up and thought it can’t be worth all of this can it? Yep: ...
1097km to 1164km Nelson to Marahau Sometimes we can be so jammy. We left Nelson at 8:10 to go to Marahau not knowing how long it would take hoping we could get the 9:30 Aqua taxi to Anchorage to do a 4 hour walk along the coast of the Abel Tasman National Park. We arrived in their car park at 9:15, Matt bought the last 2 tickets whilst I stuffed our bags with warm clothing, waterproofs and random food for the trip and jumped straight on the boat (on the back of a tractor/trailer) into the best seats. ...
Had plans to got to Abel Tasman today but spent all day in Nelson. Somehow the day just flew by. Mainly me faffing about trying to use wifi to upload blogs. Well I have been very slack recently. 3 hours later wandered around town which was pretty bland although the Currywurst & Kranksy were delicious. Who would have thought you could buy good German sausage in NZ? Our daily exercise consisted of a short hike up a hill to the centre of NZ. ...
Left Renwick and landed in Havelock 30mins later in the rain so sat at the harbourside until lunchtime watching the clouds pass over the hills and the rainbows fade in and out, in and out. Lunch at the Mussel Pot for famous huge Havelock greenshell mussels in a blue-cheese sauce and blue-cheese mussel chowder. (Hmm seem to be hooked on blue-cheese?) Only managed to get a bit further up the road to pitch in Pelorus Bridge, a DOC campsite in the forest. Just about managed a 20min walk to a nearby suspension footbridge and some pratting about on rocks before dark. ...
It’s sunny again. Hooray! So back to Renwick we trot, jump on a tandem bike (a first for both of us) and off round the vineyards we toddle. 1st stop: Forrest wines. We have a voucher for a free tasting tray from our kind bike hire guy at Old Mill B&B. Unfortunately just moments before arriving my trouser leg becomes trapped in the bike chain and rips half the hem off. I look a right hobo. ...
Wake up in the Cork & Keg carpark with rain battering on the windows. Darn it. No wine tour for us today. We go back to Blenheim, find a powered campsite next to a river, invest in wifi and hole up for the day working on SCF. People are still tweeting about it 17 days after the initial blogging and it’s appearing on so many different websites and in many different languages. Even some top websites have now mentioned it. Engadget, Reuters, … Matt’s famous again. ;) ...