Away Days - Finale

 I am sure a few people gave a sigh of relief on reading this title! Yes, tonight I will mass dump all the remaining images from last week's trip, days three and four (don't think there are any from Friday, as all we did was drive back in the rain)

Mount Taranaki nice and clear en route to the start of Wednesdays walk.

There were a multitude of these little bridges along the way

And the route was constantly up, over a spine, then back down to another re entrant and another bridge

It reminded me of Omar Bradley's description of the war in Italy - "over every hill, there was another river, and over that river, another hill"! (or something like that :))

After about an hour, we reached this swing bridge - THIS was a serious bridge! Only one person at a time, about 75m in length and I would say about 100 feet above the river below, I did a video of it as I walked across but its not as dramatic as I hoped it would be....

Our terminus - Waingongoro Hut - my reflection in the window is intentional, by the way!

Mount Taranaki from a different angle and still clear as a bell.

A couple more selfie attempts - my wife took the piss out of my ham-fisted hand technique in the first one, which is probably why I am laughing!

There were three or four Dept of Conservation guys doing some track maintenance (first time we have come across this in several years of bush walking) - above is before, below after,

Lunch stop was in the small Taranaki town of Inglewood, where I took a snap of the local war memorial.

Next stop after lunch was Pukeiti - Pukeiti is a garden of international significance in Taranaki, on the western North Island of New Zealand. It is in a gap between two sections of the Egmont National Park, to the northwest of the main cone of Mount Taranaki, on a saddle between it and the small Kaitake Range which stretches towards Oakura.

Now, I am not really a huge flower/garden fan, but as we had made the effort to visit the place, I thought I might as well take a few (ahem) pics - feel free to skim through them as quickly as you like!

The gardens are actually internationally renowned for the huge variety of rhododendron plants they have - but, of course, we were there at the wrong time of year to see any of them in bloom! 

The video below is really just to give an idea of the sound in the gardens, created by the large number of cicadas - some may be very familiar with this insect chorus, but its unlike anything I had heard in real life before I moved here, so may be of interest to UK readers, at least - to me, its a really jungle like sound! 

Back in New Plymouth and still suffering from screaming calf muscles, we walked a short distance into town for a Burger King take away that we ate on the waterfront, awaiting another sunset. En route, we passed the impressive war memorial gates at the New Plymouth Boys High School

Resting my weary legs and eating a rather nice burger as the sun dropped in the sky.

Passed this on the way back to the motel.

94 Pendarves Street was one of five homes constructed in the street by Thomas and Grace Hirst for each of their adult children - Annis Hamerton, Jane Marshall, James Hirst, Mary Devenish, and Harriet Fookes. This section of Pendarves Street became known as York Terrace, after the Hirst's homeland; 94 Pendarves Street was known as 3 York Terrace and was home to James Hirst and his family. the house is now part of the Hirst Family "Hen and Chickens" Historic Area. Together the six houses are known as the "Hen and Chickens". The hen is the Hirst parents' house at 37 Cameron St (which is also known as Willowfield) and the chickens are the five houses on the south side of Pendarves Street. Willowfield was built in 1863 and the first of the Pendarves Street houses was completed in late 1864.

And that was the end of day three - back to the motel for a few hours of murder investigation and falsely convicted death row inmates!

Day four was scheduled to be a bit less effort - we intended to head to the waterfront, hire a couple of bikes, and cycle along the Coastal Walkway - but this plan fell apart when the place we planned to hire the bikes appeared to be closed, so we headed back out a short distance into the countryside to visit this small park.

The nice-looking house in the sign above has been removed from the site, unfortunately.

Then it was lunch in the small settlement of Tupare. We ate here on our previous visit and thought it was worth a return call - unfortunately, the excellent paella of my previous experience was no longer on the menu, but I did manage a seafood risotto!

After lunch, it was back into the city centre, dropped the car off at the start of the Coastal Walkway, and set off on foot - bugger, my aching calves!

A rather modern looking war memorial 

Adjacent to which was this small field piece, which I recognized as being Italian (I have seen very similar ones outside returned servicemen's clubs etc on several occasions and must have filed away the information that it was an Italian model!). However, I had assumed it was of WWII vintage and related to the fact the NZ Division spent the second half of the war fighting in Italy........WRONG! (see below)

So, I don't really know what the connection was between this gun and New Zealand - presumably, the NZ Army had them in their arsenal and when they became obsolete, dished a few of them out for use as war memorials etc?

The older, more traditional "Cenotaph" type memorial - I did not realise until later that the inscription was the same on both sides!

And once my wife finally managed to drag me away from war related photo taking, we headed north along the coastal track for a few km, then back again.

Now finally - on our second evening in New Plymouth (I think) my wife received a Snap Chat from my son that just said "Sorry Dad". On viewing said video, I saw a box of toy soldiers, previously domiciled on top of a 6-foot cupboard, now spread all over the garage floor - and a shame faced looking cat skulking on one of the roller shafts of the garage door - this was how the box looked when we got home on Friday evening!

And the culprit, not looking very apologetic!

Fortunately. it wasn't actually as bad as it all looked and after a couple of hours work on Saturday, all was returned to good order!

And there you have it. I am attending a big Sunday game at Barrys this weekend, AWI and using some of my own Front Rank collection, so will hopefully have some nice images to share from that.