Dad and the pups

Four pups keeping Dad amused on the lawn at Alexandra.  Pups of Bevan's dog Moss and Dad's dog Spy.

Queen Charlotte Track

We were supposed to have two days cycling the Queen Charlotte track in the Marlborough Sounds but our first day dawned dull and rainy, for the third day in a row after a damp trip up the West Coast.  Not very encouraging for an early start and not good weather for cycling, so we changed some ferry bookings, borrowed some big baggy and not very becoming ponchos and set off to the start of the track by boat, Ships Cove, for a day of walking instead.

Weka foraging for food on a rainy start at Ships Cove

More Weka, there were plenty of them and very curious

Lunchtime was at Furneaux Lodge

Typical Marlborough Sounds view, spoiled by the rain and grey clouds

Fortunately, the day improved.  By 11am the rain had all but stopped and rather than catch our ferry to Punga Cove from Furneaux Lodge, we walked and covered the full 27km just after 3pm.

The next day was much better and our mountain bikes had been dropped off at Punga Cove the afternoon before, so we set off at the comfortable start time of 9am with about 50km to cover by 4pm, to catch the boat home.  We thought we'd do it easy...... how wrong we were.

This is more like it, day 2 views

Kelley about to tackle some steep rocky downhill.

 The cycling was really tough and included numerous stretches that were simply unrideable.  A lot of it was just too steep and although the track had recovered quite well after all the rain, there was still a bit of mud around.  We were hard at it until 2.30 when, with 12km still to go, we decided it was going to be a bit close for comfort so we changed our ferry booking and got an early pick up.  Was a great day though, the flat and downhill sections were great fun and views like the below were just brilliant.

Brief respite from pushing uphill...

And all worth it in the end when we were able to take a long soak in the bath at our B&B and make the trip into Blenhiem for some hard earned KFC.

Franz Joseph

The weather cleared for a quick stroll up to Franz Joseph glacier before we hit the road again.  The break in the weather wasn't to last, almost as soon as we hit the road it began to bucket down again so we were lucky to have some blue sky for the glacier.

Smoke on the water, above the river.

Franz Joseph glacier

Waterfalls

West Coast - Easter 2012

Our trip to the top of the south started with a couple of wet days up the West Coast.  Good weather to be in a car but not so great for seeing the mountains.

Lake Hawea

 

Gates of Haast, river in full flow.

Bush near the gates of Haast on a quick break from driving to see a waterfall

West Coast, grey and wet.

Cycling World Champs

Kelley had got me tickets to the cycling World Championships at Hisense Arena so we went along to see some of the action.  There were some big names there and some really strong teams trying to make their mark in the last major hit out before the Olympics.  We saw two world records broken on the night we were there and a couple of bronze medals to NZ.

NZ men's pursuit team lining up, on their way to a bronze medal behind Great Britain and Australia.

The NZ men flying along the home straight

Mens 15km Scratch race.