Rain Day

As predicted, the following day the weather turned. Our guide, Danijela, had previously opined that she’d never visited Lake Ohrid without it raining – it has its own microclimate. We waited for the rain to stop, and in a brief lull headed out to do some shopping. Nicola was after some of the famous Ohrid Pearls, and, ignoring the blandishments of the two old-established jewellers, found some to her liking in another shop.

We lunched on pizza and Macedonian salad (a staple in these parts), then continued on around the coastal path to find the church of St Jovan, or “John” as we know him; also the John who wrote the Book of Revelation. For the princely sum of MKD300 we could have looked inside, but there’s not actually much to see, and we didn’t have any MKD. The rain was settling in for the afternoon by this point, so we trudged damply back to our hotel to dry out, and await this evening’s entertainment: a dinner in the oldest restaurant in Lake Ohrid, appropriately named Antiko. 

St Jovan's Church

 Lake Ohrid is famed for its trout. So much so, they were overfished, and these days are protected so it's illegal to fish for them in the lake; these days they're all farmed. They're the speciality of the restaurant, so we had some. It was delicious. The restaurant is decorated in the antique style, but in fact only dates back to 1988. Nevertheless, we enjoyed it, with some Macedonian wine to wash it down. Tomorrow, we head to a new country!

 

Woolmers Estate

The rain had set in overnight and looked like it was going to stay for the rest of the day. Our objective for the day was to find out about Woolmers Estate. This involved going to the Visitor Centre. Called the Gregory Bob Nigel Peck Centre, this serves as reception for the cottages, guided tours, restaurant and gift shop.

It opened at 10:00am, so we drove round (because rain) even though it’s literally at the bottom of the cottage garden. But there’s no way through on foot. We went on the guided tour with Paul, as the only two guests – unsurprising for the time of year and weather conditions. Paul took us through the outbuildings, then into the main house, explaining the history of the family who built it.

Thomas I's bedroom

Marjorie (Mrs Thomas V) redecorated in pink and florals

Two brothers arrived from England and, under the system in place at the time, each established a farm next to each other across a river. Thomas Archer was granted (i.e. given, for free) 800 acres of prime land, allocated 8 convicts on assignment as workers, and the government helped with clearing the land of those pesky people who’d been living there for thousands of years. He named it Woolmers Estate, after a similar estate in his home county of Hertfordshire. Thomas Archer the First (there were six in total, all called Thomas Archer) built the original house in the style of an Indian bungalow – highly inappropriate to the Tasmanian climate. The second phase of building began 20 years later in 1840, and made the house into an Italianate style, with impressive reception rooms, designed by Thomas II.

 

Dining room. Queens Victoria and Elizabeth both dined here 

Marjorie's (Mrs Thomas V) golf clubs

A remedy for snake bites. It doesn't work

Medicine cabinet

Thomas II died of scarlet fever before he could inherit; the house passed to Thomas III, who took little interest in it, and also managed to piss away most of the money. Thomas IV didn’t do much either, and it was under Thomas V the house was restored – principally by his wife, Marjorie, who had the whole place redecorated, plumbing put in, and eventually electricity. It is in her style that the house remains today. For a long period before she arrived the house had stood vacant on the land. The final Thomas, VI, was her only son, and he never married, living in just two rooms in the house and not changing anything in the rest, which is how it comes to be so well preserved today. He bequeathed the house to what is now the Woolmers Foundation, which owns and runs the estate today. 

A Texas longhorn chair

Drawing room. White mantelpiece indicates it's for ladies

An epergne

After the tour we revisited the Visitor Centre, and had a hot chocolate. As the weather remained inclement, we eventually had lunch there, then, in a brief break in the rain, inspected the rose gardens. We chatted to the staff there who gave us recommendations for places to eat in Longford of an evening (there aren’t many). Unfortunately the place recommended had a sign in the door saying they were fully booked, so we ended up getting a Chinese takeaway.

Vivaldi

Our final full day in Venice is a free day. Unfortunately, the weather is still custard, so we didn’t venture out much to explore the city. We took a quick look at the Rialto Bridge in the morning, then headed back to the Doge’s Palace, this time to go around the Marco Polo exhibition. Marco Polo is one of Venice’s most famous sons, and the exhibition showed his life, journeys, artefacts from his trips (or “souvenirs”, as we call them), and was generally informative. Unfortunately no photography is allowed inside the exhibition. 

Rialto Bridge in the rain

Still raining, we found Ristorante Piccolo Martini, who were able to furnish us with a lunch of spaghetti and pizza.

At five o'clock we assembled for a short walk to the Grand Canal, from where we took gondola rides in groups of five. It had stopped raining by this stage, so it was quite pleasant. We just did a short round-the-block trip, without any singing...I guess you have to pay extra for that.

In the evening we had a dinner of traditional Italian snacks – hors d’oeuvres if you will – crostini, deep-fried olive balls, various pastries, schmoked schalmon schandwichesch* (v. traditional!) and the like.  

We then went along the road to see a Vivaldi concert. Antonio Vivaldi is another famous son of Venice, born here in 1678. As such, there’s a lot of Vivaldi going on at any one time, and it turns out tonight that there are in fact two events. We walked to the wrong one. Hugely apologetic, Bonnie turned us all around and took us to the correct venue, with actually plenty of time to spare, as we’d set out knowing the walking pace of our group and had ample time built in. This didn’t stop one of our group getting lost on the way, so, with five minutes to spare, we took our seats whilst Bonnie combed the streets of Venice for her. Fortunately she was found and took her seat after the first couple of numbers.

The first act was various bits of Vivaldi, and Pachelbel mixed in as well; the second half was The Four Seasons. All the players were dressed in period costume, which can’t have been easy, but I guess they do this all the time.

It started to rain as we walked home, so we picked up the pace and made it without getting too wet. This is our last night in Venice, we’re on the road again tomorrow!

 

* Said in a Sean Connery voice

Murano/Burano

Today’s adventure takes us to two of Venice’s outlying islands, one of which I’ve heard of, and one of which I ain’t. Murano is world famous for its glass. Burano is less world famous for its lace. The islands of Curano, Durano, Furano etc. all sank during the Great Island Plague of 1844.

It was raining as we breakfasted, but appeared to slacken off as we made the short walk to the jetty on the Grand Canal. Indeed, it started to brighten up. We boarded our transport – larger than the water taxis we arrived in, and were all able to get on the one boat – and headed across the lagoon to Murano.

Murano is known for its glass, and our first stop was at a glass-making factory. We watched the artists at work, including the new apprentice, whilst our guide explained the history, the processes, and how the art is now in decline – they have only eight glass blowers now. We then went into the shop for the sales pitch, as he explained all about the properties and uniqueness of each piece, and that we get 40% off for buying in the shop now. This included gold- and platinum-plated glass sets, and also glasses that are self-righting if you knock them over…a bit like Weebles. Nicola found a turtle that she liked and after some negotiation we got it for a reasonable price.

Artist at work. Note the shirt

We walked around the rest of the island, finding loads of shops which all sell glass in all its different forms, but making no further purchases. The weather remained inclement so by the time we were ready to embark we boarded quickly, and set out to stop two.

Burano is the poor relation of Murano. We stopped for lunch first, where we had risotto followed by mixed grilled fish (sole, monkfish, sea bass and prawn), accompanied by – yes! – salad! Washed down with a Venetian white wine. Afterwards we went walking around the town, which is notable for its brightly-painted houses. The reason and origins of this custom aren’t clear, but one thing is: if it wasn’t for this fact, the place would be a dump. 

There was a fashion shoot going on when we were there

We left Burano, and motored back to the Grand Canal. Our mooring was at the far end so we had a bit of a walk to get back to the hotel, during which we managed to get lost. Our map helpfully doesn’t have street names, only the names of the largest landmarks and squares. We eventually found our way, but only had a little bit of time before we were back out to Teatro La Fenice for tonight’s opera.

Mefistofele is Arrigo Boito’s only completed opera. Who he? Well, amongst other things, he was librettist to Verdi, who’s, like, famous as. He wrote the words to Otello and Falstaff. 

Mefistofele tells the story of Faust, but from the viewpoint of the devil who had a bet with God (ain’t he a charmer?), that he could tempt Faust to sell his soul. It appeared that Mefistofele wasn’t ready to appear on stage, as the first thing he did was take his clothes off and have a shower, whilst the orchestra played the prologue. That’s opera for you! The later stages were also prepared and choreographed very well, particularly the witches sabbath. There appeared to be a cast of thousands – indeed, when it came to the curtain call, I’m sure the cast outnumbered the audience, as there were various choruses of children, angels, witches, and, er, other unspecified folk; a ballet troupe; and all the main characters.

It was all jolly entertaining, and the cast kept coming back for more curtain calls. This, it transpired, was because it was in fact the last performance.

Getting to Genova

We had high hopes…

We were all assembled at 8:15. Maybe, just maybe, we could beat the traffic and get out before gridlock set in in Florence; but there was a mix-up between luggage shuttle buses (our big touring bus isn’t allowed down Florence’s delicate streets, so we always have to rendezvous outside the Carrefour Express about five minutes away, and it was 9:10 before we actually got under way.

 The day started out bright and fine, and we admired the Tuscan countryside as we rolled on down the Autostrada. But dark clouds loomed on the horizon – quite literally – and by the time we arrived at Sestri Levante, a small town in Liguria, it was raining. Not exactly pissing down, but enough to dissuade us from admiring the town in anything more than a perfunctory manner. After a brief retail interlude for Italian clothing, we stopped at a trattoria and had our first seafood of our trip, as we are now by the sea! Spaghetti di mare was fresh and excellent, and Nicola had ravioli.

Our next stop towards Genova was at San Marguerita, where we were also expecting to take a ferry to Portofino. The ferry operator had called us whilst we were en route to let us know that ferry operations had been cancelled for the day because of the weather, so we went instead to find a local church which was excessively decorated inside, in the catholic style; and followed that with hot chocolate, again in the Italian style – a thick, creamy custard-like concoction topped with whipped cream.

San Maguerita on a rainy day

We arrived at the Bristol Palace at around 4:00pm, and were soon ensconced in our room. The palace is 5-star establishment, with such features as “light” (difficult to find at our previous hotel), and of course fully functioning plumbing, walk-in shower, robes, slippers, all that mullarkey. We’re staying here for three nights.

Once unpacked we went out to explore the local area. There’s a walking tour tomorrow, so full details then, but we walked past a lot of big old buildings, commenting “there’s a thing”, and we’ll find out more about them in the morning. We checked out some restaurants and decided on one, but like most of the restaurants here it didn’t open until 7:00pm. No matter, we found the Soho Restaurant and Lounge Bar, and settled in there for some cocktails – pink spritz for Nicola, and, finally, a Negroni for me. We’ve been out and so busy of an evening that we haven’t really had time to stop for cocktails – it’s been wine wine wine all the way – so this was the first chance we’d had. It was goooood.

 

 

Shen Yun

The weather in Wellington hasn’t been great over the last few days. Yesterday it rained and rained, the day before and today it’s drizzling non-stop, and the 10-day forecast does not contain a “sun” symbol. Autumn is definitely here, and with it comes more indoor-based entertainment options.

We went to see Shen Yun at the St James Theatre. We started off with dinner at Zibibbo – a last-gasp usage of the 2013/14 entertainment book, as we await delivery of the new one for the coming year. Zibibbo specialise in modern European-oriented food – last year we went there for their inaugural dégustation menu during Wellington On A Plate, and very good it was too.

The dancing is billed as Classical Chinese, folk and ethnic dances. Many of the dances tell a story - which was explained to us by the somewhat cheesy MC before each number (and, presumably, slightly less cheesily in Chinese by the lady MC). There were also performances from two Chinese opera singers, a soprano and a tenor. The dances make use of a lot of flowing silk and ribbons as well as swirly costumes, all very brightly coloured. Interspersed with the "classical" pieces were more modern dances, which thumped home the point that was somehow omitted from any of their promotional literature, which is that all the dancers and the dance company are all followers of Falun Gong, and persecuted in China.

In the interval, we were approached by a slightly creepy Jehovah's Witness-style representative who asked us if we wanted to be "interviewed" about tonight's show. We both politely declined.

Tirohana Vineyard

Sunday, my birthday, was cold and rainy. Nevertheless we decided to execute a long-held plan to drive over the Rimutakas and go to Martinborough for lunch at the Tirohana Estate vineyard. We made the drive over in the rain, and went straight to the i-site to see which vineyards were open and pick up a map, as I mysteriously lose all the maps of Martinborough that I pick up each time we visit. We decided to go to three vineyards for tastings and to purchase some wine, including one of my favourites, Schubert, where I picked up some of their 2010 pinot noir; as well as Ata Rangi and Te Kairanga. Then, as it was still early, we went back into the town centre to Café Medici for a coffee, before heading out to lunch at Tirohana Estate vineyard.

Tirohana Estate (on a nicer day)

I’d booked Tirohana as we’d visited it before and noted that it had an indoor dining room. Whilst many of the vineyards provide al fresco dining in the summer, it was a bit chilly to be sitting outside in July! But with a log fire in the dining room, we were toasty, and enjoyed a good lunch with one of their chardonnays as accompaniment. After we’d had pudding, the waiter brought out a pancake and candle with a “Happy Birthday” message in icing, and also gave me a voucher for a free main course next time we visited (terms and conditions apply, natch), which I think we’ll use in the summer.

After lunch we tried to beat the weather on the way home, as snow was forecast down to 300m, a description which includes the Rimutaka road, and has been known to be closed in heavy weather. Fortunately it didn’t start snowing until we were almost at the top of the pass, and it wasn’t cold enough to freeze and settle, so we took it nice and slow until we reached the other side and the motorway.

After a full-on dining experience over the last two days, we stayed at home on Sunday night and I cooked some of our bounty from Moore Wilson – my famous (in our house, anyway)  steak stack. We also polished off some Schubert 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot which had been burning a hole in my wine cupboard. 

Nelson

We took Friday off and flew to Nelson in the afternoon. This was my first visit to the South Island, after living in New Zealand for over 2 years. This is not so bad as it seems – I managed to live my entire life in the UK without ever visiting Wales, for example. Nelson is in fact almost due west from Wellington, and the flight is only half an hour (depending on wind conditions). Nelson is known as the geographical centre of New Zealand, and also the sunniest place in the country.

We landed around 3:30 and hopped into a cab to our accommodation – a motor lodge on Rutherford Street (Ernest Rutherford is arguably Nelson’s most famous son, and there are many places named after him in the town). We took a short walk into town to get our bearings, and found the i-site to gather leaflets for the weekend’s entertainments (largely unnecessary, as we’d pre-booked most of it already).

In the evening we headed out to Hopgood’s Restaurant & Bar in the centre of Nelson, where I had scallops followed by pork belly, and salmon followed by gnocchi; all very well cooked and presented, and very, very tasty. The puddings were good as well – chocolate mousse and rhubarb cheesecake. Then we headed back to our room as we had an early start in the morning.

All Blacks

What was once called the Tri-Nations tournament has now evolved into a competition currently called The Championship, with Argentina being admitted to the Southern hemisphere’s rugby competition for the first time this year. Argentina have distinguished themselves as contenders in the last two Rugby World Cups, coming 3^rd in 2007 by beating France, and going out in the quarterfinals against New Zealand last year.

We scored tickets for the game early on, and headed down to watch them at the Westpac on what promised to be an evening of challenging weather conditions. The wind was blowing and more rain was promised. Fortunately we’d got tickets well up in the back of the stand, so should be away from the worst effects of the weather – although when the wind is driving the rain in horizontally, nowhere is safe. We were fortunate to be on the lee side of the stadium.

The first half was a bit of a mess. The All Blacks hadn’t scored any tries, and were lucky to be ahead by 6-5. The game wasn’t flowing and the ref was stopping the game constantly, in conditions which caused a lot of ball handling errors. Not a classic match by any stretch of the imagination.

Line-out action

When weather goes bad

As the teams came out for the second half…the lights went out. A momentary powercut in Wellington, but the floodlights have to be allowed to cool down completely before they can be restarted, which led to a 20 minute delay before the second half could begin.

The lights went out (the last fuse blew)

The second half didn’t really come alive until substitutions were made, and Piri Weepu and Liam Messam were able to inject a change of pace. Then the Pumas went down to 14 men after a sin-binning for a deliberate knock-down, preventing what looked like a certain try for Cory Jane. In the final 15 minutes there were two tries scored by Jane and Savea, and the scoreline finished a more respectable 21-5. 

McCaw rallies the troops

Walkies

We had originally planned to break our (OK, my) South Island duck at Easter, but for one reason or another, we didn’t get round to trying to book anything until quite late. When we did finally get around to looking at prices of the Interislander for Easter, all the deals had gone and they only had expensive tickets left. So we put that idea on hold for a while, and decided to stay in Wellington for the Easter break.

Last Monday, the weather forecast for the weekend was rubbish – rain, wind, and general bad weather was in prospect. This being New Zealand, of course, this meant nothing, and as the weekend approached the forecasts gradually improved, so instead of the weekend of indoor pursuits – cinema, museum etc. – we were able to get out and about as each day dawned brighter than the last.

On Friday, we explored Moa Point, which is just down the road and round the corner from where we live. There’s a nice walk there called the Eastern Walkway which we did in about 2 hours, including a visit to the Ataturk Memorial, which was erected in 1990 to commemorate the friendship between Turkey and New Zealand. The site was chosen because of its resemblance to Anzac Cove in Turkey, where the Gallipoli landings took place on 25^th April 1915. There is a similar memorial in Mornington Peninsula, Victoria.

Ataturk Memorial

On Sunday we drove round to Wairarapa and down to the coast at Putangirua, where there is a walkway up to the Pinnacles – rock formations caused by erosion into giant columns. This location was used during the filming of The Return Of The King because of its spectacular scenery. The walk is about an hour uphill (with stopping time) as we followed the river bed upstream, but was much quicker coming back. It was quite warm and we wished we’d decided to wear shorts. Damn you, MetService!

Afterwards we went for lunch at the Lake Ferry Hotel before heading back over the Rimutakas for home. 

Rotorua

The weather forecast for our three days in Rotorua was pretty grim: nearly all of New Zealand is in the grip of a huge swathe of rain, and we were right in the thick of it. Nevertheless, we decided that we should go out and explore the volcanic activity in the area, as this was after all what we’d come here for.

First thing to note about Rotorua is the smell. It whiffs. It pongs. It is everywhere, although it seems to come and go in gusts…but there’s always that background level of smell. You get used to it.

We drove about 27km south to Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland, which has a geyser that is set off artificially every day at 1015. We didn’t need to make an early start, but got on the road to make sure we could find it and be there in plenty of time, both of which we achieved with the minimum of fuss. The rain was coming and going in waves, but never completely stopped. We got our tickets to the whole park, including the geyser, and waited around n the light drizzle waiting for the show to begin. As it did, the rain got substantially heavier, and we all got somewhat soaked. The guide told the story of how the geyser had first been discovered by prisoners (it was on the site of an old open prison) and they’d used the hot water pool for washing their clothes. The soap they’d used had broken the surface tension of the pool and caused the geyser to erupt, distributing their laundry over a wide area. Nowadays they seed the geyser with an eco-friendly surfactant which has the same effect, and causes the geyser to erupt.

Who's this geyser?

Thoroughly drenched, we repaired to the café for refreshment and waited for the rain to ease off a little. This it duly did, and we went for a wander around the rest of the park, where that are various pools craters, and assorted deposits and other signs of volcanic activity. We were fortunate that the rain held off for most of the time, and only really set in again heavily when we were just on the last leg, so we rather rushed past those, and headed back to the café for a warming hot chocolate, and a trawl around the gift shop, whilst trying to dry out a bit.

This is where the café gets the hot chocolate from

On the way out, we drove past the mud pools, the final part of the tour. As it was starting to rain again, we decided to give it a miss, and this was vindicated as a truly torrential downpour then ensued as we made our way back to central Rotorua. By the time we got there we were pretty hungry, and we selected Fat Dog Café more or less at random – a good choice, as it turned out, and we had a substantial lunch there. We then set out in search of the fabled Rotorua t-shirt (all the gift shops we’d encountered so far only stocked general New Zealand t-shirts – I was after something more specific!) and had a walk around the Government Gardens, which contain some hot bubbling pools and a now-defunct geyser.

Cute baby pukeko in the Government Gardens

Anniversary

Wow! Crikey! It’s been a year since I landed here in New Zealand. A lot has happened in that time (see the previous 110 blogs for details), including moving into two houses, getting a job, buying a car and becoming an official New Zealand resident.

Freakin’ Freezing Up Here, Mr. Bigglesworth

Yesterday was the coldest day ever in Wellington (well, since records began) –snow fell in the centre of town (briefly) and on the hills surrounding. Traffic, air and rail systems have ground to a halt in large swathes of the country…it reminds me of somewhere!

Not much else to say at the moment – came first in the pub quiz again tonight, but that’s become such a commonplace these days that it’s hardly worth mentioning ;-) Hopefully by next week we’ll have finished all the immediate moving-in tasks and can then get on with being exciting again!

Barbie Time

We were up with the lark as we had a lot to do in one day. To start with, I checked that I had received my first pay from the job…and yes, the credit was there on our bank account. We had already made a plan to celebrate this event – breakfast at Matterhorn, so off we toddled, down to Cuba Street. When we got there we found that it wasn’t open yet, so we got a weekend paper and went to a café for a coffee, whilst we waited for 10 o’clock.

Shortly after 10 we returned to Matterhorn, found them open, and ordered breakfast. Very good it was too, and I’m sure we’ll be back to check out the rest of the menu at a later date.

Next on the agenda was shopping. We have two events over this weekend – a barbecue on Saturday evening, and a lunch tomorrow, so we went down to the butcher’s, the fish shop, and the supermarket to stock up on everything we needed for these.

For the barbie, we had decided on hamburgers in wraps, rather than the more prosaic white buns. So, back home to make the burger mixture. Early in the evening we prepared ourselves with swimming gear, loaded up the picnic bags with beverages, burgers, sausages, salad and wraps, and headed down to Thorndon Pool, where the barbie was being held. The raison d’être was that two of Nicola’s Treasury colleagues were leaving to return to the UK after 2 years in Wellington…so there were a lot of Treasury folk about, some of whom I’d met before, so we were able to be sociable! The pool is heated, so there were no problems with the water, but the wind had picked up (those of you following the New Zealand test match against Pakistan probably know all about this) and it was a little chilly outside, particularly in the shade. Nicola braved the pool, but as I’d already started on the beer, and it was cooling down, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour. They had an inflatable floating assault-course type thing on the pool, like they use in Wipeout! Which Nicola had a go on. Unfortunately I didn’t get my camera out in time to get a shot of her wiping out, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Two guys took over the barbecue management and started cooking everything that had been piled on the side:

Afterwards we straggled home up the hill, in the teeth of the oncoming gale, for a quiet night in. Tomorrow – further adventures in the kitchen!

It's Grim Up North

Tomorrow we’re heading off to our holiday destination of Paihia, in the Bay of Islands. We’ll be up there for a week, doing holiday stuff, driving around the area, and generally enjoying ourselves.

I’ll be taking the laptop and webcam, so please feel free to Skype us whilst we’re there! I’ll report on grimness, or lack thereof.

Looking at the weather forecast (and how reliable are those?) it looks like the current rainy/cloudy weather that has bedevilled these isles for the past week will finally lift, to give us some nice, warm, sunny weather…so it’s time for the slip-slop-slap again. 

Sadly we're going to miss the fifth home game of the Wellington Firebirds in the HRV Cup. Since we last went to see them, they've lost one, won one, and had one match abandoned; which has picked them up to 3rd in the table, with 3 games still to play, so they could still make it to the final. 

Twelve12

It had been a grey, drizzly day all day, so when we turned up at the Basin Reserve for the 5 o’clock match against Auckland Aces, our first question was whether there was going to be any play at all. We were told that the umpires had been out once to inspect the pitch already, and were due back out at 5:20. So we went up into the stands out of the continuing drizzle, and waited.

By 5:20, there were around a dozen people standing around in the middle of the pitch, discussing the weather and the state of the field. The sky was showing a slight sign of brightening, and eventually an announcement was made: there would be play, but it would be delayed until 6:20, and the match would be duly shortened to twelve overs an innings. Presumably they’d received some information from the Wellington weather service, as although it seemed to have stopped drizzling, there wasn’t anything to indicate it wouldn’t start again at a moment’s notice.

By 6:20 we’d had another announcement that play would now start at 6:40. It had brightened up a bit, and the commentator assured us over the PA that a patch of blue could be seen!

The covers come off

Auckland won the toss and decided to bat. They set off in frenetic style, scoring at 11 runs an over and by the end of the eighth had reached 89. Then Wellington had a purple patch of bowling, and in the next two overs took 3 wickets for the loss of only 4 runs. It looked like they might restrict Auckland to a reasonable total, but it wasn’t to be. They put their skates on again and knocked out a score of 125.

Wellington started in their usual style – slowly; they took 4 runs off the first over. This set them at a disadvantage from the start, as they were now trying to chase down 11 runs an over. Despite this, they picked up the speed and started scoring at a rate of around 8 runs – good, but not good enough, and that RRR was getting away from them. Then they hit a series of good overs in the middle of the innings, taking 13, 16 and 14 in overs 6 to 8. This put them back on top of the required rate, and they chugged along to the end. By the penultimate over they needed 17, and with the help of a big 6 and some good running between the wickets, reduced this down to a run a ball with 8 deliveries remaining. A quick single, and they needed 7 from 7. The final delivery of the over, and the ball is lofted into the air…and straight to the fielder. Fifth wicket down, and no run.

So, 7 needed from the final over – eminently gettable in a game of Twenty20, or even Twelve12. But it was half past eight, and in the last few overs the weather had worsened again – it was drizzling, and the light was murkier than a murky thing being murky. The batsman played, and missed; played, and missed; played, and missed; then managed to connect, and Wellington took two singles.

Note the low cloud, lights in tunnel, car headlights - it was a lot darker than it looks

Final ball, and Wellington still needed 5 to win! There’s only one way to hit a six, and as the ball rolled along the outfield we knew that they hadn’t done it. They managed to run 2, but that clearly wasn’t good enough and they ended losing by 2 runs.

Undoubtedly the conditions helped Auckland to victory – seeing the ball in the final overs must have been difficult. Nevertheless, we left with a feeling that Wellington had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. This drops them down to 5^th in the table, with only the unfortunate Otago Volts beneath them, who have yet to win a game. It will take an almighty struggle to get back into contention, and 4 of their remaining 5 games now have to be played away from home, so we’re not sanguine about their hopes of reaching the finals. But cricket’s a funny old game, and Twenty20 even more so; we’ll keep an eye on their results, and see what happens.

Cricket Again

In a move totally unanticipated by the New Zealand weather forecasting community, Sunday dawned cooller, cloudy and blustery – a clear contrast from the day before. By the time we set out for the Basin Reserve, however, the sun was beginning to break through the clouds. We weren’t in quite the same t-shirt – and – shorts order we’d been in for the Otago match, though.

A different day, and a very different match. Canterbury elected to bowl first, and Wellington struggled to make much impression in the first half, reaching 55/2 after 10 overs. Indeed, as the innings came to a close they’d only reached 107 with 3 overs remaining. At this point they decided to let rip and scored 11, 16 and 14 off the final 3 overs to finish on 148, so at least they’d posted a reasonably respectable target to beat.

Pollard scrambles to make his ground

At first, it looked like it would all be finished in a handful of overs, as Canterbury charged to 61/1 after 6 overs – a scoring rate of over 10 an over. But over the next 10 overs, Wellington pinned them back, and boundaries were few and far between. Meanwhile, they picked away at their wickets, so by the final 4 overs, Canterbury needed 34 off 24 balls. They kept trailing the required run rate until the penultimate over, when they hit a 6 and a 4, leaving them needing just 5 off the final over – the same situation Wellington had been in yesterday. Needless to say, 5 runs in an over is not a big ask in Twenty20, and they achieved it with 2 balls remaining.

Celebrating as another Canterbury wicket falls

Wellington are playing away in Nelson midweek, then back home next Sunday. Look out for the next exciting match report then!

In other news, England are 551/4 in Adelaide, where it’s now raining. This seems like a totally unfair tactic by Australia, who can normally be relied on to produce hot, dry weather for the Test series. Hopefully it’ll dry up overnight so that England can try to get everyone’s hopes up by scoring a win over Australia.

Sunny Day

On Thursday and Friday, the sun came out and the temperature in Wellington headed up and started to nudge 20°; whilst the rest of the country basked in the mid-20s, Wellington is always a few degrees cooler – in every way! I decided that the time had come to put modesty and all feelings of decorum to one side, and expose the lower halves of my legs to an unsuspecting Wellingtonian public.

Predictably, come Saturday, the sky clouded over and, whilst it wasn’t cold, it wasn’t as warm as the last couple of days. We had guests over for dinner, so I cooked a Mediterranean-themed selection of tapas and we had a relaxed evening centred on the consumption of wine in industrial quantities.

On Sunday morning, the weather had changed again, back to sunny skies. We decided to take advantage of this and go back to visit the Botanical Gardens, which were in the grip of winter last time we went. Now, the roses are out in the rose garden, and we were able to sit outside the café with carefree abandon. We took lots of picture of the roses…here’s one:

A rose

After that, we headed back home for a spot of lunch, then out again to the bustling metropolis for retail opportunities, to buy appropriate summer footwear for the coming months – you can only walk so far in flip-flops (or “jandals” as they’re known here) without your feet starting to ache. Now we feel as if we’re heading into summer properly…or “Christmas” as they call it. It does seem odd to see all the stuff usually associated with midwinter in the shops as the weather warms up…doubtless we’ll get used to it.

Later in the afternoon the weather turned back to grey overcast, so we stayed in and watched the All Blacks hammer the Scots; then The Return Of The King, followed by Kung Fu Panda. Both very good films, for entirely different reasons.

Red Rocks

We caught the bus today down to Island Bay, for a walk along the coast to the Red Rocks. http://www.newzealand.com/travel/sights-activities/scenic-highlights/natural-phenomena/scenic-highlight-details.cfm/businessid/68764.html

Island Bay, not to be confused with the Bay Of Islands, contains only one island:

It was a sunny spring day, with a bit of a breeze (as ever) blowing, so it didn’t feel too warm. We walked along the coastal path, spotting red-billed gulls and variable oystercatchers along the way.

Red-billed Gull

The oystercatcher wouldn’t stand still long enough for me to take a picture of it, so here’s one taken by someone else:

Variable oystercatcher

The waves were crashing onto the beach in a picturesque fashion, and in the distance we could see the snow-covered mountains of South Island.

After a couple of hours of leisurely stroll, we reached the red rocks. There’s a geological reason for the redness of the rocks which has something to do with iron oxide. Anyway, they are distinctively red, possibly more so in real life than is apparent from the photo.

There’s also a seal colony further along the coast, but by that stage we decided that we’d walked quite far enough, and headed back to find the Bach Café http://www.bachcafe.co.nz/ and some lunch (that’s a variable oystercatcher on their logo, so clearly they’re a common sight round these parts). Apparently the name of the café has nothing to do with Johann Sebastian.

Dance Hall Daze

Third lesson time, and our usual instructor was not there, so his stand-in took the class. We started off with some rock’n’roll, which we’d done the week before, just to refresh our memories. Then we started on a new step, the waltz. Gah! We didn’t get enough practice before we were off into yet another new one, the cha-cha-cha. I think she tried to cram too much into a one-hour session…still, maybe some of it will sink in enough for next time. Meanwhile, the dance is only a week away.

We had planned to go and watch the rugby afterwards, but as it was still raining hard we gave that one a miss and headed home. Yup, we’re fair-weather rugby fans. As a consequence of their lack of support, the Lions lost 24-31 to Bay Of Plenty, and are now trying desperately to make the cut for the playoffs. They’ll need to win their last three games convincingly to do so…we’ll go along to their last home game, providing it’s not raining!

Waterworld

As you may have noticed from my weather icon on the right, it’s been raining here in Wellington. What you may not have noticed, however, is the direction of the rain, which has changed to a warmer northerly. Unfortunately, this seems to have highlighted another issue with the flat…the bedroom window appears to be rotted through, and water is coming in through it. Once again, we’ve alerted the rental company’s property manager, who will be sorting it out. It’s not as catastrophic as the previous flooding, but it needs to be fixed.

They do like their buildings leaky here! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_homes_crisis

I hope it stops raining soon.