January 9, 2012
Christmas 2011
Two weeks of action-packed adventure up at The Doug @ Castle Hill with Granny & Grandad Boyd. Highlights included a few bike trips along the Hogs Back Track, plus an overnight camp along the track with the kids, a great walk up the Bealey Valley at Arthurs Pass, and a family trip through the Cave Stream cave with a range of ages from (nearly) 7 to (nearly) 75! Our next door neighbour Stephen also kindly took me up for a tandem paraglide from the Mt Cheeseman Ski Area (unfortunately it would appear I’d partaken of too much Christmas food to be able to fly all the way back to the village – plus I was a bit nervous at times!)
Posted by conor at 1:11 PM
November 22, 2011
Floor-tiling progress
We've now got pretty much all the floor tiles laid downstairs, with only really the pantry, control room & a couple of other miscellaneous tiles to do. After that, should just be a question of grouting and sealing the tiles. Great progress, with kind loan of almost all the required tiling equipment from Diana Adams, and help on the ground (literally!) from David Baird.
The wet tile-cutter does make quite a mess!
Posted by conor at 3:06 PM
November 14, 2011
The Gateway to Castle Hill
Inbetween floor-tiling sessions, I took a quick jaunt up the Starvation Gully route above Porters Pass to Trig 'M' in the Korowai/Torlesse Conservation Area. There are great views over Lake Lyndon into the Castle Hill Basin, along the Lake Lyndon Road towards the Rakaia river, and back down Coach Stream towards Springfield.
Posted by conor at 9:12 AM
November 7, 2011
Brighton Fireworks
We took the kids over to New Brighton to watch the Nov 5th Firework display, which was indeed spectacular. It’s a very popular event, but most people seemed to want to hang around at the back of the beach, which was perfect for the few photographers around who headed down to where the wet sand left by the outgoing tide was tailor-made for good reflections without the camera/photographer getting too wet!
Always enjoyable watching my council rates contributions going up in smoke...
Full gallery here.
Posted by conor at 12:52 PM
Hororata Highland Games & the Trimble ‘Tug of War’ team
The village of Hororata across the Canterbury Plains was holding it's inaugural Highland Games this weekend to raise funds for the community there to recover from the "Darfield" earthquake in September 2010. Trimble got a last minute call from MoreFM to enter a team in the Tug of War competition but, after getting through the heats unbeaten, our team went out with a small whimper in the semi-finals. Great day out, with plenty to see and do, including Highland dancing, pipe bands, fairground rides, etc.
Kudos to Cam, Geoff, Ildica, Jason, Jonathan, Mark, Michael, Neil, Norman, Pat & Steve! And Pat’s Highland dancing girls, Isla & Mhairi.
Full gallery here.
Posted by conor at 9:20 AM
October 25, 2011
Bealey Spur
Great spring walk up Bealey Spur with the Maddigans & Monique from Castle Hill.
Posted by conor at 2:29 PM
October 7, 2011
Diary of a Demo
Over the last month, Nikau Construction have been demolishing the shell of Trimble's Building One here in Christchurch which was gutted by fire back in May. It's been fascinating to watch, although a little unnerving when it's often difficult to distinguish one of our (fortunately diminishing!) aftershocks from a heavy piece of concrete crumbling to the ground just outside. It may well take about 18 months before it's replacement is complete.
Full gallery here.
Posted by conor at 1:07 PM
September 6, 2011
Ohau Retro-style
Our neighbours, Paul & Amanda, at Castle Hill invited us to join them down at Lake Ohau for an extended 40th birthday gathering with a retro-theme, and the retro-style competition both on and off the slopes was hard to beat. Fantastic calm blue-sky day on the Saturday for a barbeque on the slopes with the mother-of-all-barbeques arriving on it’s own wheels. It’s getting harder and harder to keep up with Evie on the slopes, and Conor, Ildica & Evie all had some (mostly successful) attempts at the snowboard box jump! Ohau Ski Field is an awesome location, would love to go back sometime when it’s got more snow.
Posted by conor at 3:02 PM
August 22, 2011
Winter Fun with Auntie Boo
With around 40cm of snow falling in Castle Hill village the week Ildica's sister came to visit, what better time to head up to get a weekend's skiing in? After a -11o start on Saturday morning, cloudless, calm, blue-sky days couldn't have been better. Porters was still looking bare in places, but still a lot of fun. And some great exploring round the village in the snow as well.
Posted by conor at 12:32 PM
July 24, 2011
Winter holidays
After turning up to The Doug to find water cascading through the downstairs light fittings (due to more crappy plumbing work), the first week of the school holidays turned out to be blessed by great weather and a reasonable amount of snow. Got the house dried out within 48 hours (thanks to Tony from Enviroclean, who claimed his industrial wet-vac could "suck a sailor off your sister"), and settled the kids into 5 mornings of ski school at Porters where by the end of the week, we are now almost struggling to keep up with Evie on all the pistes there. Just in time for the latter half of the week, Granny & Grandad had sent over some funky helmet covers from Headztrong which the kids loved.
Posted by conor at 9:19 PM
