The World Wide Webb

​I enjoyed a leisurely morning this morning, including a WhatsApp call with Matt and Dad. Their budget related chat didn’t last long, so it was a lovely call.  I then headed out to find the bus to the Christchurch Gondola. The gondola is about 5 miles out of the city, so I had to either catch a normal bus or the gondola shuttle service. As the normal bus had a published timetable and left from near my apartment, I chose that option. I started to regret my choice when a teenager at the back of the bus was playing loud ‘music’ (Yes, I was tempted to use my teacher voice), at the same time as the father in front of me started playing the ABC song for his young child. The two did not mix well. Just as my sanity was really at risk, luckily the teenager discovered headphones, and the father and child reached their stop. The rest of the ride was uneventful.  The gondola really did feel like it was a bit in the middle of nowhere, but the views going up were great. The views from the t...

​It’s Saturday, so it is Parkrun day! I was strangely grateful for the 8am start as it promised to be another warm day today, and also enjoyed the fact that my apartment is so close to Hagley Park. Given that I would ultimately be visiting the park three times today, this was very convenient. Hagley Parkrun is a big event, with well over 700 participants. Despite battling bitey insects and pollen, I even managed to overtake some people in the final kilometre. My time did not break any records, but I very much enjoyed my run around the park.  As I was running, I saw the set-up for a big event, so did some googling and found out that ‘Christmas in the Park’ was taking place this evening. I like Christmas, I like parks, and I like music, so this sounded like excellent news. I noted 7:30pm and added it to my plans for the rest of the day.  I had a bit of time to chill after parkrun. I had a lovely cup of tea at the cafe, and then a shower and some admin time in my apartment. At ar...

​I had a very slow start this morning, enjoying having my own apartment and the pleasure that is breakfast in my pyjamas! I caught up with Dad on WhatsApp and then headed into the city centre a bit before lunchtime. I had a few bits and bobs I wanted to sort in the centre - all the exciting things like buying a new charging cable for my phone and recycling socks with holes in them - so got that done and then had a light lunch. This was a wonderfully entertaining half an hour of my life, and I would now like to make a movie about the life of the (very loud) lady who was sat at the table next to me, talking to a VERY patient lady who was her personal shopping client. It was a beautiful day today with clear blue skies, so I then went for a wander to pick up a few geocaches and take in more of the sights of the city, including some cool Christmas window displays. I tried to take photos of these, but the sun made it pretty much impossible, so you will have to make do with a picture of a chu...

​Apart from those who had left early for the airport, the rest of the group had a final breakfast together this morning before saying our goodbyes. It was then time for me to move my suitcase from the tour hotel to my apartment for the next few days. I was too early to check-in, but good to get rid of the suitcase to go exploring. One of my missions for my time in Christchurch was to get a haircut, so I used the powers of google to find somewhere that looked suitable. It should have been a five minute walk from my apartment, but there were a LOT of AdLabs nearby and I got a bit distracted…. Anyway, I did eventually make it there and managed to book an appointment for this afternoon. I then continued my walk down by the river, taking in lots of cool sights and caches, including the Suffragette monument, monument to Scott of the Antarctic, and the memorial bridge.  On my self-guided tour I also discovered the city library - home of seemingly ALL the fun, as well as an AdLab series. I...

​It was only fitting that we had another very early start this morning. Our first stop was a pretty special one - we planted a tree together to leave our ‘handprint’ on New Zealand. I am pleased to say that I got stuck into the process - I hope that Dad is proud that his green fingers at least temporarily rubbed off on me. We were experiencing proper west coast weather - I.e. a lot of rain - so were not able to do a bush walk, and instead stopped at the town of Hokitika. I had an excellent pot of tea and pastry, and then managed to squeeze in a couple of caches too! I have converted Dana to geocaching, so it was lovely to have a caching buddy. We continued to head north to Greymouth, so called because it is where there is the mouth of the river Grey…. It was still raining, so we once more took shelter in a cafe! Pleasingly the rain let up for long enough for a fairly decent run of caches and AdLabs. Kreig had started to drive the bus to Christchurch, leaving us to catch the Trans Alpin...

​I have had some pretty special days whilst travelling over the past months, but I think today has been one of the very best. I was very relieved to wake up to decent weather, making it likely that our booked helicopter flight would go ahead. After a quick breakfast, the seven of us who had signed up headed to the helicopter offices to check-in and have the pre-flight safety video. I must confess to having enjoyed the video, with highlights including instructions not to throw snowballs at the helicopter, and not to put your hands in the air near the helicopter… We then had a short minibus ride out to the landing site, and it was wonderful to see four helicopters all come in to land in something close to a formation. Jonathan, Viktoria, Fionnuala, Dana and I were in one helicopter with pilot Aaron, and we were soon soaring in the air with stunning views of the mountains and glacier.  We then landed on the Franz Josef glacier and had ten minutes to walk on the ice and take photos. It...