So, quite a lot has happened really in the last wee while, I suppose should start with the weekend. Easter Weekend, which is looong over here (you get Friday and Monday off) which is nice. Went off to Paynes ford. Which is up near Nelson. The weather report for the weekend was pretty awful really, but we decided to go anyway. So early on Saturday morning (ok, 11am ;) we headed off. A pretty excellent drive up through Lewis Pass my new favourite way to the West Coast. You do pass the odd sight or two along the way…

We were a little lucky – snow has arrived early, and if we had tried to get across this way on the Thursday, the road would have been blocked. So a little lucky there. Drove past Hamner and Muroa springs – hot pool places. Places I definitely want to get to in the winter.

So on off up to Takaka – and after having a quick look at the crag (too dark to climb) we headed off to what has been one of the nicest hostels I have stayed in. Kiwi-Anna I think it was called – again – the BBH card coming in useful with some more nice discounts. The hostel itself had free Pool, free table tennis, babyfoot, and a hot spa. So we were quite content. It’s quite nice to be outside in the freezing air, mostly submerged in a hot pool drinking a nice cool beer. Yes, quite nice. Clear skies, good stars, even if Orion does shoot the opposite way (it’s the little differences)

–Sat– Up early (10am!) and off to the crag, I guess any new climbing place you go to takes you time to get used to the rock – but I think we all enjoyed our second days climbing a little more. The rock is limestone, lots of huge handholds and on the harder routes, lots of pinches and slopers. The grading was quite interesting… I mean I know I’ve been off climbing for a month and a half now, but still.. some of those 16s felt a lot harder than 6a… (and 16 is around about 5b ish I think). Glynn and Andy were climbing very well, though I think they found the grades (at least on the first day) a little steeper than expected. Mind you, one of the 18s was really chossy so that didn’t help the confidence.

Here is a pic of Glynn on an 18 that he led towards the end of the day

That night, and the next, I stayed on the campground with friends from the CUTC (Canterbury Uni Tramping Club). Very sound people, and very good climbers. The campsite itself was set up by a local climber who really promoted the crag (recently died in a very unfortunate climbing accident… as far as I can gather absailed off the end of the rope – didn’t fall far, but far enough). However, the campsite – hangdog, is set up for climbers. It’s a very eccentric place, the guy must have been totally pro-British – the sign to the front door is Victoria Street. There are some quite excellent signs, and maps up.

Though I think my favourite (while totally unPC) was the following – I also enlarged the key to the map

it’s the Tory map of the world..

In the evenings, people collect firewood from around and about, and make a big old fire for everyone to sit around, a guitar is produced and it’s all just good fun. Mind you, it was pretty damn cold, though the sleeping bag that my kind Aunt Mary lent me (when I visited at Christmas) has actually been really good. I do kinda wish I’d brought my sleeping bag from home, I know I won’t want it when I travel on, but I guess I could have posted it home.

–Sunday–

Up and climbing at the crack-o-dawn (well 8) and down to the crag, led just a couple of 16s (though they were interesting enough) Top roped a 20 and had a go at a 22 – which here you can see Sylvain leading. Andy later on-site flashed it too. Most impressive. Sylvain also did a 25 (really quite hard), though I was not there to get pics of it, but quite savage I am sure!!

And here is a pic of another of the climbers, Jana, trying “Elvis lives in Takaka” perhaps?

–Monday–

All too soon time to head home, picked up at 9:30 by Maeve, Glynn and Andy, and off to Kaiteriteri (in the Able Tasman area) to do a little canoeing. It was fun, though I would have liked my own kayak really. Been ages since I did that, and I’ve never, ever, had one with a rudder and foot pedals before. Not sure if this is a sea-kayaking thing, or if it is just so that tourists find it harder to kill themselves.

Then a long old drive back along the coast. And back to 429 Memorial Avenue. Just in time for me to move out, which I did. So my new address is

So all the thousands of postcards and letters that I’m sure people have been saving up until I move, well, that’s the address to send them too. Glynn et al will be staying in Memorial for the next 3 weeks at least, so I don’t think post is going to be too much of an issue really.

The new place is quite homey really. Has a fire, which is nice and warm, a big old garden, a hot shower, washing machine, computer (with internet access ;) A quite large tele (which I do not intend watching much!) and all in all, ’tis grand. It’s quite a bit closer to work too, which is just great in the mornings, but a little further from the squash courts, but reasonably close to the climbing gym! – well probably fairly equidistant from Memorial really. So yes, all in all, it’s a grand old place. Hopefully will settle in easily here and get to stay until November… it’s actually pretty incredible the amount of rubbish I seem to have accumulated already – and I meant to travel light ;).

Finally, headed out to see Secret Window – Johnny Depp, Stephen King adaptation. Quite a scary movie really, and not a happy ending, but still, an excellent film.

Well, what a weekend, left on Saturday morning for the tramp, picked up from home, which was great :) It was a great tramp, have said I will write a trip report for it too for the tramping club. Apparently there’s a bar of chocolate in it for me! It was a wet trip. A very wet trip.

This was after about 2 mins into the trip, and it pretty much went like this for the next two days.

The first day definitely felt like the longest (though it wasn’t of course!) We were basically following a river crossing backwards and forwards for the first couple of hours.

But it felt like an age before we finally saw the hut we were to stay in poking out of the trees – hehehe, our leader – Sylvia – who is great – got quite the slagging after saying there was just 1km left until the hut (I doubt it was more than two – but the terrain was pretty awful so it took a while) So yeah, the hut

It really is such a great system, I got the hut pass a while ago – $60 or something, lasts for the year, the huts we stayed in would have been $10 a night… it’s great though, you get your own bed (so no need to carry a thermarest… though that’s not a bad idea!) they all have tabletops, the better huts have tables and heaters – the one we were in had a stove, which was lovely. Spent the evening playing cards, excellent. Oh, a nice brie and tux biscuits after a long days walking goes down very well!

–Sunday–

So up and away, this was the longer day – walking from 8am until 5pm, but it felt easier, the terrain was quite varied over the course of the day – part of it was close to a mountain called ‘broken mountain’. The site of some massive earthquake that pretty much split a mountain in half. You end up with a lot of scree

Then it was off up a pretty steep gully and to a tarn.

Off down to the second hut (still with wet feet for the day!) This one was pretty much the same as last night – except that all the wood was wet, and so we didn’t really have a fire.

–Monday–

Hiked out, it was nice to end on a pretty easy walk out – again really different terrain too

It was a great weekend though, thanks to Sylvia, Amber, Geoff, Thor, Jana and Fraser for a fun weekend. Hope to get away with them again sometime, I really do think the CUTC is going to work out. Really looking forward to the Mountain Skills course they run too!

Other than that, well moving out this week sometime, though I had forgotten that Maeve has the car for the week so not quite sure what to do about that one! Harumph, will see…

Firstly a silly pic of me on casual Friday in the contact centre

I mean come on, I should be in one of those bands where they just pretend to sing on stage…. headphone sets are cool ;)

So, the RA palindrome was supposedly Racecar, however, I never trusted that as being the longest one (besides in some dictionaries it’s hyphenated anyway) so.. here’s the text of a mail I sent round work (did get some funny replies ;)

Just for the record (never did trust that race-car or racecar palindrome!)

Malayalam.

Is a noun in the English language

Main Entry: Mal-a-ya-lam

Pronunciation: “ma-l&-‘y-l&m;, “m-

Function: noun

: the Dravidian language of Kerala, southwest India, closely related to

Tamil

(source www.m-w.com)

And I quote from the quiz..

“What seven letter word, beginning with the letters ‘RA’ is the longest single-word palindrome in the english language?’

Well, I mean, clearly the whole competition should be null and void seeing as Malayalam (that common every day word) is 9 letters long…

Just to nit-pick ;)

I’m sure there are longer single word palindromes out there.. but sure anyway.

I think I’m spending too much time on palindromes :) Hehehe, so work was grand this week, fun party last night – 1/2 of it was spent suspended from the beams over the deck trying to learn how to swap over ropes in mid air. Something I will be doing in 3 weeks time (with a 150m drop below me… more about that later!) This weekend will be tramping in Arthurs pass, sounds like a pretty – tough – route we’ll be doing, but all the more fun for that. No tracks.. which will be a first for over here. Following ridges etc. I think. Other than that, oh yes – well next week will be Paynes Ford, quite looking forward to that (sport climbing). And next week I move into the new house, so that’s going to be – different!!! hmmmm, hopefully in a good way.

A quick pic from the river crossing. If you’re wondering what I’m wearing it’s in order to ‘blend’ over here… Kiwis all wear ‘PolyPro’ and shorts. It’s a poor-mans thermal underwear.. But quite warm, retains heat when wet, and dries incredibly quickly.

But it does come in pretty weird colours :)

So what did I do this week.. hmmm, work was grand, phisio was fine too! – ACC have said they’ll cover it all (really is a great system!), so that’s all good. Had a table quiz in work on the friday night pretty tricksy questions… What’s the longest palindrome in the english language? Starts with RA. Answers on a postcard… ;)

Saturday – went on a river crossing course which was great fun, pretty much the same I think, as the one Glynn and Maeve went on a while ago – they just teach you how to cross a river (methods of linking up etc), things to look out for (i.e can you back out – is there space to get out the other side, is there a margin of safety – and also – is there badness a bit further down the river (e.g are you crossing upstream of a waterfall)). All things to consider :)

But great fun, and a really sound bunch of people too, really looking forward to getting into the college club a bit, they do mountaineering too, so lots to join in on.

Sunday – well a great start to the day when my brother Chris rang saying that ‘Oops, we accidently had transferred the tax-back you got into Dad’s account’. Harumph, see I put in for tax back when I left Ireland, and my friend Liam got 800 euro back or something, so I was expecting about the same, but never heard anything, so pretty much gave up on it. So, yeah, pretty much a bonus of 862 euro or something. Which is definitely nice.

So I went to the Katmandu sale… (patagonia / great outdoors chain of this part of the world). And bought myself some semi-rigid boots which should be well capable of taking crampons, well, actually they’re really quite rigid, but they’re not plastics… so I think they should be fine for the stuff I want to do, though will be asking around a bit – they have a returns policy here..

Then just went out climbing for a single pitch, have to get back training again, been too long out of it, though I guess I’ve just been keeping busy with squash, still, time to get back into it (now that the weather has turned bad ;) me smart.

Maeve turned a 1/4 of a century, had a really cracking dinner here for it – loadsa vino (Glynns sterling choice – he’s currently in OZ climbing with Domhnall) They had an amazing itinerary mapped out so I’m really looking forward to hearing about it.