Ross and Wyn Davies Travel Blog

We woke to a sunny morning. It was time to move on. We’d arranged jobs in the Bay of Plenty starting on 23 March, and we had stuff to sort out in Dunedin. We’d had a great few weeks in Central Otago – explored lots of new places and were starting to get fitter. Now it was time to clear out the storage locker and get rid of more stuff and sort out what we’d need for up north.
We headed off in the early afternoon, and Wyn had her first go driving the whole enterprise – motorhome and the car on behind – from Luggate to Cromwell. Continue reading →

This was D-Day for us, our day of reckoning. We’d trained and built up for the climb, Mt Roy is 1500m or so, a climb of over 1200m.  Sometimes it’s called Roys Peak, but Mt Roy sounds more adventurous. The Wednesday Walking Group was  going there that day as well, at least a couple of them were – the rest were off on Cavalcade epics. My sister was one of the two. We had seen their pace the previous week, so decided we’d better be like the Two Little Pigs and start out an hour ealier. Continue reading →

Lake Dunstan Thursday 19 February
The diary doesn’t record much activity for this day. Probably we were tuckered out from keeping up with the walking group the previous day. The forecast was for rain for a few days, and it started in the afternoon. We ended up driving a km or so to my sisters to pick up our mail. We got a recipe for peach chutney at the same time, we had a bit of an excess of peaches, and chutney sounded like a good idea.
More rain Friday 20 February
It’s depressing when the forecast is so reliable these days – rain was predicted, and rain we got. Continue reading →

Tuesday 17th February was definitely rest and relax day. It was a lovely calm morning, with a light northerly later. We did a bit more washing of the tramping gear. And finally headed into Cromwell. First stop was the dump aka the Refuse Transfer Station. We had a couple of supermarket bags of rubbish, and another of recyclables. We were allowed to do this for a reasonable charge, and it’s good to be able to recycle stuff. Then it was over to the dump station at the BP to empty the toilet cassettes, and get rid of our grey waste (shower/sinks etc). Then we fueled up, and used their tap to fill up our water tank. It was good to be empty and full. Lunch was late and we even had a swim in the lake back at our “camp”. Well Wyn did a few swimming motions, mine was more of a dunk-  it was not warm – but was refreshing.  Tea was revved up leftover pasta from the night before and was rather nice. We ended the day sorting out our tramping gear again, ready for another tramp the following day.

We woke to the alarm and a bit excited. We were going tramping, somewhere up the Pisa Range. It was a cold gray morning, with the possibility of rain – just as forecast. But it was also forcast to improve through the day. It took us a while to get going, making lunch and sorting our gear. It wasn’t far to the start of the track, up Swann Road up the Lowburn Valley. We finally started off about 10am, and the climbing started about 5 minutes later. We were heading up the Packspur Track, or something like that. It was a 4WD sort of track, although fairly steep for that. Continue reading →

We made a slow start to the day. It was sunny but cold, with a chilling wind. We tackled the previous day’s dishes, and generally cleaned up. We headed into Cromwell by 11am, in time to see the veteran cars in the park – on display and doing various driving/driver tests. It looks like it was a national rally for the veterans – they were very old cars, in magnificent condition. They ranged in age from about 1905 to the late 1910s; some were basic engines on wheels with a seat, others were quite sporty. We went on to the Sunday market at Old Cromwell Town, which was packing up by the time we got there. But we still found some garlic pate, and there were still sticky buns at Provisions. These things should be outlawed – there was a woman who came in while we were there who was surprised and thrilled that there were still some left – she was obviously feeding an addiction 🙂 And they were yummy, we sat at a picnic table overlooking Lake Dunstan getting sticky ourselves. Continue reading →

I awoke and thought Yes – Sunshine, clear sky and calm lake. The forecast was for good weather and I was hoping it would deliver after the last few days of rain.  I pulled up the blinds and just enjoyed the lake view of Lake Dunstan and a cup of tea. Continue reading →

We woke to a grey (or is it gray?) morning – it had rained in the night and was colder in the morning (14 deg at 9am). We caught up with the blog, and Wyn started catching up on emails. I went off on a shopping expedition to Cromwell. I was surprised to find that there was no place selling music CDs, other than a couple in the petrol stations and a handful in the supermarket. I guess that is a sign of the music market these days? Continue reading →

We woke to the sound of rain on the roof. Now that was unusual. We cannot remember when it was that we last had real rain – how’s that for lucky. It was a gray morning, low cloud, light rain, cold, southerly. So it was a bit of a catch up time with the computer. The forecast was for it to clear a bit – or at least stop raining. We decided to go out for an explore/walk/tramp anyway. We loaded up the walking gear into the car – although these days it is mostly in the car and we just need to make sure we’ve got the rigfht stuff. She’s a well-stocked wee car at the moment – I think we could launch a fairly ambitious cross-country expedition provisioned with just what we could find in there 🙂 Continue reading →

We had a rather slow start to the day as it was a cloudy, cold morning with a southerly still blowing. We decided we would then make the most of the rest of the day and loaded our bikes onto the car with the intention of having a walk first up Mt Iron and then biking a bit of the Outlet Track from Albert Town towards Wanaka. Ambitious plan in hindsight considering how we get sidetracked these days with leisurely sightseeing. Continue reading →

We woke up to a cold morning, the southerly was certainly making its presence felt. What a view we woke up too. Looking out the back window, one can almost imagine that we are floating on the water.  We decided we would still go ahead with our planned bike ride. After all I have ridden in this kind of weather in Dunedin often I reminded myself. Actually I was glad it was cooler as the temperatures have been sweltering. We had a fun ride into Cromwell as we rode all the way on tracks which I was sure would run out and we would have to ride on the very busy road but we were actually able to ride under the bridge and all the way to Old Cromwell town. Continue reading →

Yesterday (Monday 9th) we woke up to a warm morning. It had certainly been very hot during the night and I hadn’t slept very well so I snoozed on for awhile even though we were leaving Earnscleugh and moving to Lake Dunstan. The longer we seem to be at a place (this had certainly been one of our longer stints)the more there seems to be to pack up. Thankfully ,Ross had done a lot of this the evening before. Continue reading →

Today, (Saturday 31st January) is our day off, and will be followed by lots more… we called it quits. Chucked it in. Snatched it. Resigned. We’d given it a good shot – we were expecting tired and sore muscles and joints. But this was more than that. We were at risk of longer-term effects. Some of this went beyond hard work – and could only be described as brutal – working hours in the same position without change. We decided enough was enough, and made yesterday our last day. Today was going to be our first day off, and off we will be.  Not sure where to next. I need to find out first whether I’m needed tomorrow to work in the morning to train another stripper.