It Was A Dark And Stormy Night ..

... And the captain said, "Spin us a yarn, Vic".

And the yarn began like this ...

It really was a dark and stormy night. We could hear the wind a-howlin' and the rain a bashin' on the windows and roof, but worst of all was the sound of the sea a-crashin' on the beach, which is remarkably near, and at an altitude only feet below our cabin.

I heard all this for most of the night because I was stricken yesterday, very suddenly, by a cold which amongst other things, impaired my breathing to a problematical level, and I therefore could not sleep. Not a new problem for me, as I have always been the world champion cold-catcher, but it does make the night rather long. There are worse things.

This morning the forecast here on the West Coast is for rain at a rate of 30 mm per hour (that is a remarkable amount of rain but the West Coast is famous for it). So the forecast and the cold conspired to persuade us not to go for a walk this morning. But, in the way of weather forecasting all over the world, the actuality is completely different to the forecast. The sun is blazing down. In a complete reversal of recent roles, Gay has just gone for a run and I have cried off, choosing instead to do this heavy session of blogging. It is not a bad thing to have a rest day every now and again. I hope to be on the road again tomorrow.

Respectable Walk

We are walking about 15-16 kms a day in Hokitika. Quite respectable, even if somewhat reduced from the strenuous efforts of the two weeks in Alexandra.

More varied terrain, though. This morning, we started from our temporary home next to the beach, crossed a railroad track, a glow-worm cave, an airport, walked through native bushland, round a racecourse, past a milk products factory, along a river, past a white heron, some old docks, some ship wreckage, enormous amounts of driftwood on the beach, an artisanal bakery, a sock museum, and much more, before returning to base.

We started from sea level, of course. Even though the maximum altitude of the walk is about 80 metres, we had stunning views of the Southern Alps and Mt Cook and its surrounding permanent snowfields and glaciers.

Hokitika is yet another town which grew up as a result of a gold rush. The gold was first discovered in 1864 and by the end of that year there were 800 diggers in the area. Then it mushroomed. Hokitika sprang up as a port through which to bring in supplies, even though finding a safe place to berth ships was difficult. It became one of New Zealand's busiest ports, in terms of number of ships and immigrants, and amount of customs revenue generated. In 1866 43.5% of immigrants to NZ arrived in Hokitika. Half of the total gold produced on the west coast was shipped from here. All pretty amazing as the treacherous sand bar at the harbour entrance made the port one of the most dangerous in NZ. In 1866 a ship was wrecked here once every 10 weeks on average. Presumably much of that gold is at the bottom of the sea.

Another major industry in Hokitika at that time was obviously food, drink and accommodation. The town at one time had 103 hotels, of which 85 were crammed into the narrow mile of Revell Street, which is currently our home.

Going West

I walked nearly 400 kms during our two weeks in Alexandra. But all things must come to an end. Sunday evening we went out to a Thai restaurant with friends Owen and Lynette. On Monday morning we bade farewell to always laughing Denise of the excellent Alexandra Garden Court Motel. Denise allegedly has a husband Rowley, although I personally think he is a myth as I have never seen him, although it may be true that he works away all week. We know two Denises in New Zealand and they are both very keen gardeners. I will tell you more of Denise of Oxford and her garden when we get there; Denise of Alexandra has a splendid large garden in which to relax, and she is also a very keen vegetable gardener, so she and Gay get on like a house on fire, and we get a lot of access to very fresh vegetables.

We left Alexandra before 8 am, for the 500 kms drive to Hokitika on the West Coast. After an hour or so we made a very slight diversion into Wanaka for breakfast, and to break up the journey. Wanaka is in a spectacular setting. It has an extremely individual small cinema – the seating consists almost entirely of old armchairs and settees – I say almost, because there is also a bright yellow Morris Minor with its rear end embedded in the wall, but with all four seats intact and usually occupied. All films, whether designed that way or not, have an intermission in this establishment – you can tell when the intermission is coming up because of the wonderful aroma of the cookies which are being baked for the intermission in the attached cafe. It is possible to order a meal for the intermission, which lasts as long as it takes the slowest diner to finish hir meal. My nephew Andrew was in NZ on a cycling holiday with his wife and they saw one of the “Lord of the Rings” films here. I remember Andrew telling me how surreal it was to watch the film, with its spectacular scenery, then to step outside and see the same scenery in the flesh (LOTR was filmed in many locations all over New Zealand, especially South Island).

From Wanaka, the drive took us past more of the superb and varied landscape for which NZ is justly famed, past the stunning Lake Hawea, the top end of Lake Wanaka , through mountain passes, great areas of native bushland, glaciers, and eventually to the beautiful West Coast. The forecast was for lots of rain, but we saw none, although we drove on steaming, wet roads a few times.

At Hokitika, the walking will be daily, but not as long and arduous as at Alexandra/Clyde – we know of no long walks here. But we do plan to unshackle our bicycles, which have so far remained unused because of illness in the camp, and to give them a little exercise.

Here we are once again in the care of Adele and Brian, of 252 Beachside Motels, who always make us most welcome and who seem to look forward to our visits as much as we do.

Walking To Lose Weight - A Tale Of Two Bodies

They had a fat man on the TV here the other day. The item was trailed as “Walking the nation to lose weight”. What has happened to our language? I thought it was going to be about encouraging people to walk. A nation is comprised of people, a country is made up of land, and a state is a political entity. Anyway, this man, who had started off at 130 kgs, was walking the length of the country as part of his campaign to lose 50 kgs – he had already lost some of his body before he started the walk.

When breakfast TV caught him, he had walked from Auckland to Wellington. Despite all we hear of the wonderful research that backs up television interviewers, they were unable to tell us how much weight he had lost, because they did not have an adequate set of scales in the studio.
So we were left none the wiser, and neither was he, I suspect. But I have some bad news for him.

Just before Christmas, I was asked, by a friend, how much weight I was losing with all the walking I have been doing. He was taken aback when I said I had lost not an ounce. The distance the fat man had walked, from Auckland to Wellington, is 658 kms, which is coincidentally almost exactly how far I have walked since arriving in New Zealand 5 weeks ago (not bad considering the hiatus with a chest infection). During that same time, I have lost 1 kilogram, which is about what I had put on during the previous two weeks of travelling and little exercise – the usual redundancy principle of last in, first out.

So, one kilo lost in over 650 kms. The fat man has 915 kms of walking left to do, from Picton to Invercargill in South Island. This means he has done two fifths of his distance. If he loses weight at the same rate as me, he will lose a total of 2.5 kgs in his total walk, which is probably rather less than he is hoping for.

Of course I hope he will lose considerably more, and he probably will, but I can not understand what my own body is up to. Losing weight is not my objective, but one would expect it as a by-product when covering this sort of distance. I am honestly not eating any more than I would without the walking. Today, so far, my pedometer tells me I have walked 32,650 steps, a distance of 26.75 kms, and I have used 1677 calories. It seems to me that my output is exceeding input, or is at least giving it a run for its money. And I normally do lose a few kilos while charging around New Zealand like this. Answers on a postcard, please.

I am happy to report not only that I have walked more than 180 kms this week, which is what I shall have to sustain for 10 weeks during VBW, but that Gay is back in action. Sensibly, she has not leapt straight into that sort of distance, but for the last few mornings she has walked for 90 minutes without mishap

Measuring Up

Back to walking 30 kms a day, after a couple of interruptions at the weekend. The torrential rains we had then were from the same weather system which caused such huge flooding a couple of days before in Queensland and New South Wales, Australia.

Not surprising, you might say, if you are one of the many who think that New Zealand consists of a couple of islands just off the coast of Australia. That's what it looks like on the map, doesn't it? And that's what most of us in the northern hemisphere think. But it is true only if you also accept that Great Britain is a couple of islands just off the coast of North Africa, because the distances are the same. It is 3 hours flying time from New Zealand to the nearest point of Australia.

Maps can be deceptive. Like measuring instruments, apparently. I have mentioned before that my morning walk here in Alexandra includes the riverside walk, alongside the mighty Clutha river, from the bridge at Alexandra to the bridge at Clyde, in alternate directions each morning. The distance of that walk seems to be officially changing from day to day.

For years it has been signposted as 12.8 kms. Just over a week ago, men were at work installing numbered posts at each kilometre along the walk. They were somewhat erratically spaced. A couple of days later, the same men were digging the posts out again. One of them (the men, not the posts) told me that they had always been told that the distance was 12.8 kms, so they had prepared posts numbered 1-13 (!!). While planting the posts, they had realised they were going to have too many, so they had measured the path, twice, with a wheel. Now they knew the path is only 11.2 kms long, so they were having new post, numbered 1-11 (!!) made. This seemed incorrect to me, because I walk at a very steady 10 mins per kilometre and it takes me two hours to walk the river bank, which seems to indicate 12 kms.

The new posts are now planted. I have timed myself between the posts each day, with a stopwatch, as well as with my pedometer. Starting from the Alexandra bridge over the Clutha, the times for the first 3 “kilometres” are: 7 mins 50 seconds, 9 mins 40 seconds, 19 mins 30 seconds. The other kilometres are fairly accurate at just under 10 minutes, but this is the result of measuring with a wheel? Back to the drawing board, lads!

The path is quite well used by cyclists and walkers, many of these keeping track of their times and distances. I have seen a few baffled faces in the past few days. Especially the jogger I met yesterday, who thought he was doing a 6 kms run out to the 3 kms post and back. He was very relieved when I told him he was actually doing almost 8 kms- he had thought he was going to sleep in mid-run.

Civilisation?

The forecast for Friday was for rain. Lots of rain, with severe weather and flood warnings for much of the country. I walked anyway, 30 kms in the rain. The same forecast gave rain for ensuing days. Saturday morning, I awoke to the sound of rain battering on the roof. This reminded me that I had not had a rest day for some weeks. In fact I have walked about 500 kms since the last pause. I was obviously in need of a day off, so no kilometres that day.

I used the day to catch up on my reading. The book I am part way through at the moment is “Monday's Warriors” by Maurice Shadbolt. I'll be back to that in a minute but first I will mention that I recently read “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee”, a book which encapsulates some of the shocking history of the United States towards their native population. In a nutshell, government policy and professional soldiers were used to displace and virtually wipe out the vast majority of the Native Americans. Time and again, treaties which the Indians had only recently signed, at the behest of the government, were abrogated, frequently by the means of the army riding into the centre of townships, and proceeding to massacre the people, kill all the animals, and dismantle and torch the dwellings, all in the interests of the inexorable westward advance of the European settlers, and “manifest destiny”.

It is a disgraceful story of which all Americans should be ashamed. Some are. A tale of ethnic cleansing before the term came into use, and a blueprint for others to use from then on. It couldn't happen here – or could it?

Back to my current reading. “Monday's Warriors” is a novel, but the author makes it quite clear that the events portrayed actually took place. I grew up and attended school while the British Empire was still in existence. In our history lessons, where they concerned New Zealand, we learned of the proud Maori people, with their romantic bearing and warrior past. How they integrated themselves willingly and, apart from a few skirmishes, peacefully, into “The Empire On Which The Sun Never Sets”.

I have since discovered that this is not quite true and that the few skirmishes were much more than that. They were wars between an implacable, righteous, colonising army and a fierce and brutal foe. They were nasty. Last year I read another book by Maurice Shadbolt, “The Season Of The Jew”. Also a fictionalised account of real events, this tells the story of Te Kooti, a Maori leader who convinced himself that the Maori were reliving the story of the persecuted Old Testament Hebrews, and proceeded to smite accordingly. An excellent book.

In “Monday's Warriors” I find that, like the United States cavalry, the British Army in New Zealand were given to the same procedure of charging into peaceful settlements, maiming and killing, burning and destroying.

The events of which I am reading took place in the 1860s and 1870s, long years after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (between Maori chiefs and representatives of Her Britannic Majesty, but guess who wrote it!). The Treaty is still, to this day, a hot political issue in New Zealand
One such sacking of a village and slaughter of its inhabitants in this Paradise took place only 75 years before I was born.

Can anybody tell me, what does civilisation mean, and when will we achieve it?

What's Up, Doc?

I have spent each of the last 4 mornings charging round the river walk/rail trail circuit I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. The first morning I was accompanied by Gay. We thought her chest infection had cleared up, as mine has. A week ago in the Catlins, she managed the 20 kms Kaka Point to Nugget Point and return trip several days on the trot. Last week we did the shorter Skyline Walk at Oamaru together each morning. But it became clear on Tuesday morning that she has had a relapse, clearly struggling to get round the 25 kms circuit she was having for breakfast last year. Back home the almost whooping-cough returned, and the heavy limbs and fluey feeling.

So it was back to the doctor on Wednesday – her third trip to the doctor in a month. Normally, apart from the annual check-up, she barely knows the way to a doctor's surgery. This was of course yet another doctor in yet another town, Alexandra this time.

The bad news was a pulse of 93 (her beat is normally below 60), slightly high temperature and a bit of noise from the lungs. The good news was that it should clear up with lots of rest, beaucoup de liquides, no more antibiotics, in fact no medication except some paracetamol to ease the aches and pains. The pulse is already down to mid-60s, the paracetamol had a very quick effect on the aches, and I am left to walk on my own.

There was an interesting connection with our home area. Dr Williamson's son is, or has been, a member of the New Zealand cycling team. The team is based in Limoux, which is 30 kms from Puivert – I walked between the two several times last year. The good doctor has even been to Limoux to visit his son so probably had a good opportunity to compare the produce of the two wine-producing areas.

I have already mentioned that I make a point of foregoing breakfast so that I can indulge in a magnificent date scone at the Post Office cafe and restaurant in Clyde in mid-walk. Last year we kept bumping into a man who goes to the same establishment each morning with the same objective. He is Owen Healey, who lives nearby but normally goes for a pre-scone bike ride – in fact we frequently see him on the river track before we get to Clyde. Last year we became friendly and this year we have made a point of meeting him at the cafe. In her current state of health Gay has been driving there so that we could all have a bit of a chin-wag before retuning to business, which in my case means doing the rest of the walk. Owen tells us that the whole Williamson family are cycling nuts and that the young, Limoux-based, one of the species (sorry, can't remember his name at the moment) is an up-coming star, and one to watch. Remember, you read it here first.

My objective in our two weeks at Alexandra is to walk 30 kms every day, weather permitting. I should thus be able to simulate 2 weeks of the 10-week VBW, as a check on my preparedness. In fact, it was while Gay and I were doing the same thing last year, plus many other long walks in other parts of New Zealand, that I began to formulate the idea of doing an ultra-distance walk.