Category Archives: Walking

Getting there

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Saturday 13 June 2026 – In the opening salvo for our Istanbul trip, I inveighed at some length about the horrors of an 0230 alarm call and how I never wanted to suffer another one.

Well….

Our alarm was set for 0330 in order to get us to Heathrow for our 0700 flight to Pisa.  Our taxi was due at 0430; 0431 came and went, and we were, of course, immediately worried that Someone Had Blundered and that we would have a frantic dash to an overpriced airport car park. But the taxi turned up only about five minutes late, and he still managed to get us to Heathrow before 0500, mainly by displaying a fine contempt for speed limits.

Terminal 5 was busy – largely because we were there a few minutes before the bag drop actually opened… 

Despite being lumped in with hoi polloi at the back of the aeroplane, I thought my hard-foughtpaid-for Bronze membership of the BA Club would get us through the bag drop process (once it opened) quickly, only to discover, as we jumped from queue to queue in a vain attempt to find one which actually moved, that the cattle class bag drop was entirely deserted. So we waved goodbye to our bags there and headed for security.

My backpack was laden with cameras, power banks, backup drives, cables, adapters and other technical paraphernalia, and so I tend to expect that mine is the one that will attract attention as it passes through the scanners. It was actually Jane’s backpack that got picked on this time, because of the suspicious, nay subversive, items therein – spare (plastic) ferrules for our walking poles. That little setback aside, we were on our way with 90 minutes to spare before our departure, so a stop for coffee seemed a good idea.  I peered over the edge into the mosh pit of Terminal 5’s departure lounge

and it suddenly seemed a good idea to find a sit-down restaurant for our coffee. We took our seats in the Giraffe “Feel Good Food” restaurant and donned our cloak of invisibility for the obligatory 10 minutes until someone decided that our custom might be worthwhile, and ordered coffee-and-Danish, seated in front of a screen telling us that information on our departure gate would be vouchsafed to us in 40 minutes or so.  In the meantime, Google (via our boarding passes in our Google Wallets) had told us not only what our gate number was but also promised that the flight would be on time. It’s a fine philosophical point this – is this prescience on Google’s part an impressive victory for the power of technology harnessed for the good of humanity? Or is it just a tiny but creepy? Just like the fact that, towards the expiry of a bank card, it knows the details of my new one apparently before my bank does and certainly before my bank tells me. I mean, I’m only the customer here. (Of course, since I don’t pay for my banking and therefore the service is free, it means I’m the product, not the customer.)

Anyhoo…coffee and Danish consumed, we went to our gate. While we awaited our summons for the flight, a chap in a green HF Holidays shirt and sporting a name badge came over and asked us if by any chance we were with the HF Holidays group. Something about us (maybe the Merrell footwear or the Craghopper trousers) had clearly marked us out in Trevor’s eyes as being candidates for his group of Cinque Terre visitors. And so it was that we met a significant fraction of the (delightfully) small group with whom we’d be spending the next few days. The group is just eight people, plus the very genial Trevor, who, having introduced us all round, pottered off in search of the remaining group members. This was our first introduction to the HF Holidays universe – many of the group had been on multiple HF Holiday gatherings, which boded well for the rest of our week.

While all this was going on, BA personnel were prowling the area looking for people with large bags so that they could sorrowfully tell them that because the flight was full, the bags would have to be checked in to the hold. In the event, there were empty seats on the plane (some of them, delightfully, beside me) and so I wondered why they were being so pre-emptive. Anyway, the flight pushed back early and arrived even earlier, which is not quite the good news that it might be, as it meant that Pisa Airport weren’t ready for us with sufficient buses. But after only ten minutes or so of standing in bright sunshine and 25°C temperatures while dressed in our 4.30am trousers and fleeces, a bus arrived to take us to the entry point to the terminal.

I say “entry point to the terminal” with a slightly hollow laugh. Under a canopy obviously specially erected for just this circumstance, this is what we were faced with,

courtesy of the brain-damaged decision by 51.89% of the Great British Voting Public to leave the EU. For some moments, we inched forward as people at the front of the queue painstakingly had their fingerprints and mugshots taken, before the Italian authorities decided “bugger it” and reverted to the previous arrangement. So we shot forward into a delightfully cool terminal, past the now-redundant machines

(in their defence there four more on the other side of this partition)  to

more queues. The irony of the poster beside this second set of queues was not lost on me.

The process of getting through immigration took about an hour, but it did mean that our bags were waiting for us as we clustered around Trevor in the baggage hall; he then led us off to meet our bus driver who was called, I think Jeremiah. He was in charge of a vehicle which had enough seats to accommodate us, almost enough luggage space in its boot to hold all our bags and absolutely no bloody legroom for anyone taller than 5′ 6″. It also had a suspension system designed to cope with much more weight than it was laden with today – it was a bumpy, uncomfortable ride for 90 minutes as we headed to Bonassola, which was to be our base for the week.  Trevor tried to distract us by pointing out Things Of Interest as we went; we caught sight of the roof of the baptistry building on the site of the famous Leaning Tower, for example. However, since we’d spent considerable time at the site only a year ago, not getting a better view wasn’t an issue.

Eventually we left the high-speed but bumpy motorway for the low-speed and twisty roads that led to Bonassola. Every so often, we could get a glimpse of the very attractive-looking coastline, and then we got our first sights of Bonassola itself.

Before long we had reached the limit of where the bus could take us – the pedestrian area of the town

which is very clearly a seaside resorty sort of place.

Waiting for us there was Rebecca, Trevor’s accomplice from HF holidays, who pointed us towards our hotel, the Hotel delle Rose, 

a short suitcase trundle away where we were welcomed with smiles and great efficiency, so that we were in our room within minutes and the aircon switched on. 

One of the attractive aspects of this walking holiday is that it’s not a place-to-place-to-place affair like a Via Francigena or Camino; we’re here for the week, so could completely unpack and make ourselves at home. So we did that, and then went out to get something to eat, it being by now quite a long time since the 0730 BA flapjack had hit our digestive systems. Fortunately, hard next door to Hotel delle Rose is Caffè delle Rose,

which apart from being a gelateria artigiana, does a mean focaccia panini and salata vegeteriana. And beer. So we availed ourselves of those and were joined by Jenny, one of our group, giving us the chance to get to know her a little better.

After lunch, we rested for a little while at the hotel before joining a short walk round Bonassola,

to enable Trevor to show us where the important things were in the town, particularly places where we could buy packed lunches, since (sigh) we might be short of coffee bars to rest at over the course of the next week.

The tour was, of necessity, quite short, because Bonassola is not a big place. Along one side of the main street is an embankment which was originally the support for a railway built in Victorian times

and which provided both a bulwark against the worst of the sea weather when it was bad and allowed tunnels through so that people could get access to the beaches.

It’s a charming place, particularly in the sunshine, which we’re due to see a lot of during the week we’re here. As I write this, I’m glad to see the lovely weather. Come back and talk to me as I’m toiling up the steep valley sides in 30°C heat later on in the week and I might have a different attitude, but for now it seemed like a nice-a place. There were some lovely décor touches as we walked around.

In the main supermarket in the town we had another striking “small world” encounter. The keen of memory among you will remember that we were in this neck of the woods (but somewhat south of here) a year ago when we walked the Via Francigena. In a place called San Quirico, we bumped into a Dutch lass who we’d first met the year before in the Antarctic on M/V Hondius. Today, as we queued up with our bananas, the lass in front of us was none other than Agnese, an Italian girl who we’d first met on M/V Kinfish at the other end of the earth, in the Arctic. She it was, along with Karlo, her chap, who participated, along with other people of questionable sanity, in the Polar Plunge as we navigated alongside the glacial coast of Bråsvellbreen, and now there she was in the same Italian shop as us; she and Karlo had come to visit her mum, who has a place in Bonassola. The first coincidence was pretty unusual; the second was, frankly, astonishing.

We were a bit short of Euro cash, and needed to find an ATM. The one that Trevor knew about was no longer active, but back at the hotel, Rebecca pointed us at the Post Office. To find it, she said, we had to walk past “the old men”. It was quite clear what she meant;

a sight quite common in Southern Europe – the menfolk of the town sitting round in the shade and shooting the breeze, presumably to the great relief of their spouses, who will be glad they’re out of the house.

Back at the hotel, we had a welcome briefing on the hotel’s rooftop terrace over a glass of (a very decent) Prosecco,

during which we started the process of getting to know each other better, and, importantly,  found out what awaited us the following day (a choice between a shorter or longer walk, which they accidentally kept calling the easier or harder walk). And then we finished off the day with dinner at a local restaurant, Si Và, just round the corner. This was to be our regular dinner restaurant, as the hotel kitchen, alas, was not operational because the chef had retired and, as yet, no replacement had been found for him.

The food was very good, but the restaurant suffered from the serious flaw which afflicts so many Italian restaurants in Italy – such is the expectation that diners want wine that they don’t have any gin.  Sigh….well, a Campari spritz will have to do. We followed dinner with a final cuppa back on the hotel terrace.

Thus ended our journey to the outskirts of the Cinque Terre. Tomorrow we get the chance to explore at least one of the villages and work out for ourselves exactly how hard the walking is going to be (by all accounts, quite hard, incidentally). Stay tuned to see how much we suffer, why don’t you? 

 

 

 

 

Hiking Kaikoura

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Wednesday 4 March 2026 – The Hapuku Lodge is such a wonderful environment that we both were powerfully tempted to spend the day relaxing. It would have been splendid had the weather been crap; then we wouldn’t have needed any further bidding to remain slothful. However, looking out of our bedroom window,

we could see it wasn’t. So we went for a walk. Obviously.

Kaikoura is set on a peninsula which juts out from the east coast just far enough to make walking round it a decent  distance for the sort of hike we thought we could cope with.

 

It’s about 20km south of the lodge, so we retrieved our car and set off. The plan was to park at the point of the peninsula and walk round it until we got back to the car. However, lots of other people had the same idea and the small car park actually at the far end of the peninsula was full. It wasn’t a problem; we were still going to walk the same distance irrespective of where we started, so we found a spot a kilometre or so back and started from there instead. The peninsula is clearly a holiday hotspot, and I had a chuckle at one place’s marketing of an attraction for passing punters.

The recent snow that had settled on the mountains provided a great backdrop for photos of the very rocky seashore.

At the point of the peninsula, one can opt to walk along the rocks or take the path to the top of the cliffs; we opted to do the latter. It’s a well-presented path to start with, up a reasonably stiff climb of about 50m vertical.

The path then wends its way along the cliff top, past a small and unusually-sited lighthouse

which can only work to the north, since vegetation has grown up to obscure any light it shows in any other direction. The peninsula walk is a popular one; there were plenty of other walkers along it,

all presumably taking advantage of today being the first day of good weather for a while. As you might expect, the views along the way are excellent.

There’s a seal colony on the rocks to the south of the peninsula.

Those brown specks are actually fur seals,

which, as any fule kno, are not actually seals, but sealions. Using the dodgy end of the video capabilities of the phone, one can take slightly ropey video of them doing their sealiony things.

We could see the people who had decided to walk the lower path as they passed a wooden teepee on the shore.

I’m not quite sure why it’s special – there are any number of these things set up in the woods around Surrey, but there it is. Had we wanted to explore further, we could at that point have taken a path down to the shore, but

steps? I don’t think so. We’ve only just recovered from Tongariro.

As we went along, it rather looked as if there was going to be another stiff climb

which looked rather daunting. There’s someone working their way up it in this photo.

Yes, there is.

It frankly looked like bloody hard work, so having climbed a stile to get to it,

we were rather glad to note that one could go round as well as over.

We’d psyched ourselves up for the steep bit, honest, guv; but going round was a much more attractive prospect. The going was a little muddy in places – not seriously, but enough to give evidence of the wet weather that had preceded today’s lovely sunshine. The scenery continued to be wonderful, both looking towards the mountains

and southwards over the cliffs.

Eventually, the path reaches a settlement called South Bay

(I’d call it a town, but there’s no cafe, so civilisation hasn’t quite reached it yet). On the rocks outside South Bay there were several seabirds, which we saw were mainly shags. One, though, we thought was an egret,

and we were wrong. It was actually a spoonbill. Yes, it was.

and it was doing its spoonbilly things, again, captured at the far end of what’s possible with today’s phones.

At South Bay, the path turns back to cross the peninsula from south to north. We passed a house where the post box almost had a turf roof (lichens in actual fact of course)

and another which gave evidence of how windy it normally is round here.

The path led past some splendid agapanthus,

still in flower (most of the North Island agapanthus was over, so it was lovely to see this).

Leaving South Bay, the surroundings change quite significantly

as the path goes through a small pine forest.

Beside the path was today’s Mystery Object;

ramps which we couldn’t believe were a construct of nature. There were actually two of these double ramps and I wondered whether at some stage they were part of a mountain bike trail, creating some jumps for the deluded fools who go in for screaming down steep hills on narrow muddy paths.

We’ll never know.

At the top of the wood, one emerges into the outskirts of Kaikoura, taking “Tom’s Track” to get back through to the north coast of the peninsula.

This led us to a view over the Kaikoura Esplanade

and, blessedly, past a coffee shop, the Bee Box, where we had a small rest and a large flat white.

We were then on the road that runs along the north coast of the peninsula and simply had to walk along to where we’d started.  The walk led past another tribute to Tom

and a striking wooden sculpture

back to the car.

So, that was the Kaikoura pensinsula

and a very pleasant 10km hike it was, too. We headed back to the Lodge and took it easy for the rest of the afternoon before another superb dinner in the restaurant there. The food really was extremely fine.

The original plan had been to take part in a star-gazing session as night fell. However, clear as the day had been, clouds came in to foil that plan. Nonetheless, the moon looked good as it rose in the evening.

That signalled the end of our time in Kaikoura and regretfully we have to leave the lovely Hapuku Lodge tomorrow, to head further south. Stay tuned to see where we go next, eh?

 

 

 

 

 

Wending our way to Windy Wellington

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Wednesday 25 February 2026 – Our next stop would be Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand, which is some four hours’ drive from Napier. Because they’d been such excellent hosts and made our stay at 415 Marine Parade so comfortable and convivial, it was almost a shame to be leaving; but we had to move on. Because we’d drunk quite a lot of theirs, we gave them a bottle of one of our favourite gins, Drumshanbo Gunpowder Irish Gin. Perhaps it might be enough to get Esther back on the gin….

It was a long drive, but a pleasant one.  Since the weather continued to be wonderful, the scenery was, of course, lovely, as is typical of the North Island, particularly as we approached Wellington.

Napier is in Hawkes bay, which is world famous for its wines. We passed several vineyards, which, unlike those seen in Europe, are level, rather than being on a slope. The plants also seem to have a much denser leafiness than is familiar in Europe. Some of the vines were in their nappies (Nappy Valley…?)

actually netting to keep the birds off the ripened grapes. Hawkes Bay is also, according to Pete the gannet driver, the fruit bowl of New Zealand. We passed lots of apple orchards, for example, and some kiwi, fig and olive plantations, too.

We also passed the first wind farm that we’d seen on our travels here. Our road wended its way between the turbines, which was a bit surreal.

We had a serendipitous encounter with a charming village not too far south of Napier, in our quest for a coffee stop. Jane noticed that there was a cafe in Norsewood, just off State Highway 2. I thought that the name might just be, well, just this name, you know? But I was wrong – the village is actually the site of a Norwegian settlement from 1872. We parked up in front of a very quirky building

 

and Jane went into the Information Centre

where a couple of ladies were on duty. She asked them what the story was about Norsewood and they both started to tell her, each interrupting and correcting the other, which was a comedy moment. Long story short, that period in New Zealand’s history saw a decline in people from Britain immigrating and so the government turned to the Scandinavian countries for a source of hardy people who were familiar with forest management – the area was called the “Seventy Mile Bush” but was actually dense forest. So it was that Norsewood came into being on the back of Norwegian immigrants. About 20 years ago a heritage museum was set up to celebrate the history of the place, and the village itself retains some Scandinavian quirks.

There’s also a replica of a Nordic Stave Church. Those of you who followed our Arctic trip will know of the delight with which we discovered these gorgeous churches as we travelled in the Norwegian midlands, and, indeed back in Oslo. This replica was tiny, and not actually constructed at all like a real stave church, but it looked the part from the outside.

It was part of a garden called “Johanna’s World” which is also dedicated to the memory of these early Norwegian settlers. After taking a coffee in the very pleasant cafe, we exited Norsewood (via Odin Street and Hengist Street, incidentally) and continued towards Wellington.

We had chosen our route to Wellington because it took us near the Hutt Valley. Living there is someone whom I last saw in 2006, when we both attended the same music summer school, played in the same orchestra and drank with the same disreputable members of the brass section. Through the tendrils of Facebook we had stayed in the sort of light contact that platform is actually extremely good for, and Andy had got in touch when he saw on FB that we’d be visiting New Zealand; so we arranged to meet. One is never quite certain how these things will turn out, but it was a pleasure to meet him again and find out what had led him from the UK to become a resident on the other side of the globe. He and his partner, Teressa, suggested that we take lunch in Petone, on the outskirts of Wellington, and so we had a great time over a meal in Speight’s and a subsequent drink in the Sprig and Fern. Like our encounter with Jess and Ian, this social aspect was an excellent leavening of the travelling routine.

And so we came to Wellington, where we’re staying at the (very posh) Bolton Hotel. Our accommodation has some kitchen facilities, including a sight to gladden my heart.

These things are important, you know.

The hotel had included some clear, unambiguous and easy-to-follow instructions as to how to use the washing machine, with pictures an’ everyfink, the result of which was nevertheless that we failed satisfactorily to complete our laundry before it was time for bed, so we left it, in the hope that it would have unlocked itself by morning, and got our heads down.

Thursday 26 – The machine had not unlocked itself by morning, but switching it off showed it who was boss and we were able to get our clean and really quite nearly dry laundry out, thank goodness.

Our only scheduled activity for the day wasn’t due until the evening (and you’ll have to wait until the next entry in these pages to find out more about it), so, the ironing done (because our seeking of enjoyment is relentless) we had the bulk of the day to our own devices. Yesterday’s fine weather had rather deserted us,

so we donned rain jackets and we went for a walk. Obviously.

We hadn’t got a huge amount of time to spare, so Jane had mapped out a route that took us round local sights – the government buildings, cathedrals, the waterfront. In general, the area we were in was what you might call typical capital city architecture.

The main parliament building is quite an impressive edifice

faced with a rather fine grey marble. Next to it is another government building, called “the Beehive” whose form is reminiscent of a skep, a traditional woven form of beehive. The building houses the offices of the Prime Minister and other government ministers.

 

Opposite the Beehive is a lawn with sculptures which look like a banana, a mushroom and a carrot

but which are, apparently, supposed to represent a bird’s head, an altar and a canoe. No, really. There is symbolism in this choice: the location is near where the original (Polynesian) canoes landed, where an altar of stones was built. Birds are seen as messengers or links between heaven and earth. So, moving swiftly on….

The next building we passed looked somewhat churchy

but is the government library. Just beyond it is a real church

the Roman Catholic Cathedral. Its interior is rather restrained for a Catholic church

and in a side chapel there was one of those Adorations going on

so we left quietly so as not to get told off again.

Not too far from the Catholic Cathedral is the Anglican one, the new St. Paul’s, which is a vast edifice with rather Art Deco overtones.

 

The interior is light

and has several impressive features:  the mosaic at the far end;

some lovely stained glass;

and a very nice bit of carving in the marble, a tribute to the building industry of New Zealand.

Also, up a side corridor, is the Lady Chapel, which is very handsome, with a magnificent scent of the wood it’s made from.

It was originally built in 1905 as St. Paul’s church in Paraparaumu (more of this town later in an entirely unrelated way), and moved here in 1990.

Having seen the new St. Paul’s we then walked around the corner to the old St. Pauls, which has definite overtones of stave church in its overall appearance.

A board outside makes quite the claim

which is

absolutely justified. It’s not huge, but it is magnificent. The stained glass here is lovely, too

Our next target was the waterfront, to get to which one passes the railway station.

The walk took us past what was very clearly the working part of the waterfront towards the more gentrified part, with some attractive buildings

and water-based sculptures.

Some kids were disporting themselves in kayaks, playing a game which appeared to involve them shouting aggressively at each other and the tops of their voices

and several of them had taken to pedal carts and appeared to be racing each other.

There’s a decent view over the harbour towards Petone, where we’d been the day before, and Lowry Bay.

There’s a lagoon called Whairepo Lagoon, where the Wellington rowing club has its HQ. It’s encompassed by two bridges, the Love Lock bridge

and, rather more interestingly on the other side, the “City to Sea” Bridge

which we went to investigate, but not before having a spot of lunch, at a decent eatery called St. Johns. There’s a rather intriguing entry to the bridge on the left hand side as you see above,

and the whole thing is the basis for 1993 artwork by Para Matchitt. There’s a lot of it, and it’s difficult to capture photographically, but I hope this gives you the idea.

Our walk back to the hotel took us past the Wellington Central Library, with its striking supporting pillars. There’s a lot of work going on around there, but I bet it’ll be lovely when it’s finished.

Back at the hotel we had time for a cup of Twinings Finest Earl Grey before we had to strike out again, and I’ll tell you all about that…..some other time.