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
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
April 12, 2011
Refugee time at Castle Hill
We've felt incredibly lucky to be able to partially escape the initial trials and tribulations of post-earthquake life in Christchurch, and we've been able to share that a little bit with a few friends over the last few weeks. All the various Castle Hill kids have had a great time at Springfield School and it will be a real wrench to be leaving the school at the end of term this week. Thanks to the Keohanes for the company, the craic and the St Patricks Day house-pimping, thanks to everybody who made it up to Castle Hill for Ruairi's birthday, thanks to friends and neighbours at Huntsbury for looking after the house/keys and cutting the grass; we'll look forward to picking up the pieces at Huntsbury shortly after Easter.
Posted by conor at 11:08 PM
January 26, 2011
Fun at Castle Hill
Water-pistols on the water-slide... knocking together a see-saw from a log off-cut and a couple of planks... simple times, fun times...
Posted by conor at 12:06 PM
Helicopter Hill
Had a great walk up Helicopter Hill in Craigieburn Forest Park, early in the morning before things got too hot. Lyndon Saddle is now immortalised as the location where Ruairi's first wobbly tooth made a break for freedom. Easy walking, kids full of energy, and a great location for views across the whole Castle Hill basin.
Posted by conor at 11:54 AM
January 13, 2011
Positive start to 2011
Headed up to Castle Hill for our first extended stay in the house, for what ended up being a great mixture of chilling out, plenty of sun, stars, friends, a bit of painting/oiling, an overnight tramp with Ruairi, some mountain-biking, and some track-building. We have mostly working bathrooms now, so the priority is to get mostly dust-free inside, oil the inside of the logs, and build the rest of the kitchen. We also had a really interesting couple of hours at Kura Tawhiti (the rocks in the Castle Hill Basin) where a Ngai Tahu guide working with DoC talked about the Maori history of the area, made relevant quite a few of the Maori creation-type stories, and showed how the rocks provided a lot of shelter from such things as the weather & pouakai (with Ngai Tahu believing that Castle Hill Peak/Tawera was the nesting spot of the last of the pouakai).
Posted by conor at 10:10 AM
September 5, 2010
Day out in the Mournes
I spent a few days with my family in Belfast before heading (via Dublin) to Stephen's wedding at Chatsworth in the Peak District. I had a great day out for a walk up the Annalong Valley in the Mourne Mountains with my Mum & Dad, and Colin & Hilary. Was great to see N. Ireland looking like I remember it, and such a contrast from the soggy trip we had there in August 2008. It was also while I was in Belfast that I heard about the Magnitude 7.1 earthquake that hit Christchurch. I managed to get through to Ildica on her mobile fairly quickly and while she had endured 45 seconds of the house shaking so much that it was physically impossible to get down the stairs, there was relatively little damage to our house. However our neighbours have lost 2 brick chimneys, we have at least 2 sets of friends with houses so extensively damaged they may yet need to be demolished, and at the time of writing there are around 3000 houses uninhabitable in the wider Christchurch/Canterbury region. A number of historic Christchurch/Canterbury buildings have been badly damaged, quite a number of city-centre buildings have suffered badly (e.g. a lot of brick facades have collapsed), and there is extensive damage to infrastructure such as sewerage (e.g. broken pipes, but also areas where while pipes may not be damaged, the gradients have changed, and so stuff doesn’t flow in the direction it used to). More coverage here…
Posted by conor at 2:51 PM
February 15, 2010
Boys Day Out
A boys day out at the Air Force Museum Open Day with Grandpa Mike. Enjoyable short air display with the Air Force parachute team jumping out of a Hercules, plus 2 Iroquois helicopters and a Harvard.
Posted by conor at 7:20 AM
February 8, 2010
Ildica at Castle Hill
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| Ildica at Castle Hill |
Posted by conor at 8:32 AM
January 29, 2010
Woolshed Creek Tramp
The kids first "proper" overnight tramp to Woolshed Creek Hut on the Mt. Somers Sub-alpine walkway in south Canterbury. We brought along a couple of extra Sherpas who seemed to enjoy the experience too. Had a little bit of everything, sun, wind, cloud, including a reminder of a) how wet the inside of a cloud is, and b) how quickly the weather can change in the mountains. 5 kms each way, plus 400m of ascent, and the kids did brilliantly, especially Ruairi whose legs are somewhat shorter than everybody else's.
Posted by conor at 9:41 AM
November 26, 2009
Checking out progress with my Mum & Dad
Mark the Builder needed a flat-plate compactor brought up to compact the material inside the slab, so it seemed like a good opportunity to take Mum & Dad up to check out the progress and explore around the village. We tramped up through the beech forest to the bush-line, which gave us a great vantage point over the basin, and from where we could see Mark & Jamie beavering away 300m below. I also stitched together a panorama of the Castle Hill basin stretching from Craigieburn/Broken River round to Lake Lyndon.
Posted by conor at 2:21 PM
September 28, 2009
Huntsbury Preschool "What Not To Wear" Night video clip
This is the video clip that the team behind the Huntsbury Preschool fundraiser put together for showing on the night. Bit of a laugh all round!
Posted by conor at 4:03 PM
September 22, 2009
Post-makeover Portraits
A picture says a thousand words, so I won’t bother adding anything…
Posted by conor at 9:25 AM
September 17, 2008
UK Trip 2008 - Singapore
Singapore was an enjoyable break on the way back from the UK, including meeting up with Nick Wakefield & Mark Vander Klei. Hotel was great and Singapore was hot and humid (pleasantly different from the UK!). We explored
Singapore Zoo (the kids & Nick all got a kiss from the sealion!) including the
Night Safari, as well as Chinatown.
Posted by conor at 11:35 AM
September 8, 2008
UK Trip 2008 - Scotland
Well, it didn't get much drier in Scotland. We actually think there were was some precipitation at least once on every day of our trip except the penultimate one! However, it didn't stop us enjoying ourselves. We enjoying spending time at Eastfield farm, exploring and playing with Grandpa's digger, seeing Castle Campbell near Dollar, Edinburgh Castle & the
Falkirk Wheel among other attractions, enjoying 4 days at
Crieff Hydro, stalking squirrels & weasels, and catching up with good friends. It was great to see everybody in both Ireland & Scotland!
Posted by conor at 2:28 PM
September 5, 2008
UK Trip 2008 - N. Ireland
Well, our long awaited trip to the UK before Evie starts school next week began with nearly two weeks in N. Ireland at the start of what turned out to the be the "gloomiest" month on record in the UK (i.e. the lowest number of hours of sunshine ever). Most of the UK Boyd clan came over to see us for the middle weekend, which was great, and Evie & Ruairi enjoyed getting to know their similarly-aged second cousin Anna. Trips included the Giant's Causeway, the North Antrim coast, the Belfast Wheel, and a castle or two. Lots of fun and great to catch up with everyone.
Posted by conor at 2:13 PM
May 19, 2008
House for sale
The Travers original farmhouse, Eastfield, is up for sale, and available for your viewing pleasure at the Strutt & Parker website (click on the pic below).
You can even download the brochure from
here.
Posted by conor at 11:10 AM
May 14, 2008
Family Portrait!
Taken on Gillespie's Beach (near Fox Glacier) on tripod with long lens, Mt. Tasman & Aoraki-Mt. Cook behind.
Posted by conor at 10:08 PM
April 7, 2008
Late (great!) summer holiday
This year's holiday (well, summer holiday, since we've already got a holiday to the UK in August lined up too), was a bit of a
tour round the South Island culminating in the
Warbirds over Wanaka airshow at Easter. We started off by heading up to Golden Bay for nearly a week at Ligar Bay (same bay as last summer), which was great, and got us in a relaxed mood for the rest of the holiday. Then we spent a week camping down the West Coast, staying at Westport and Fox Glacier. Great weather for the Coast, and I was pleased to be able to get down to Lake Matheson to get some nice photos of Aoraki & Tasman reflected in the still waters of the lake - a beautiful spot. Then it was on through Haast Pass to Lake Hawea near Wanaka where we had rented a large house on the waterfront for 10 days. Among other things, Ildica & I had a great overnight in Brewster Hut, high above Haast Pass, with some beautiful weather, and a scramble up to the top of 2154m high Mt. Armstrong, where we had great views north to Aoraki, and south to Mt. Aspiring.
Posted by conor at 4:00 PM
February 18, 2008
Beautiful Castle Hill (again)
Spent an overnight at Castle Hill again, leaving Christchurch in torrential rain (long overdue) to find the rain had stopped in the mountains an hour and a half away. The next day dawned beautifully clear and calm, and with an extremely photogenic "pond" in place at Kura Tawhiti (Castle Hill) Conservation area. I've also got a new lens for my camera (a
Canon 55-250mm IS lens nominally for the
Warbirds over Wanaka air festival we're going to at Easter), so it was an excuse to practise with it - great for long range candids of the kids for a start!
Posted by conor at 12:22 PM
January 5, 2008
Christmas 2007
Nice to have 2 weeks off to spend with the family, doing a range of things, like fighting a bush fire on Quail Island, 3 days in Arthur's Pass (including a day's tramping without the kids for Ildica & I!), doing the Gondola Walk, etc. Oh yeah, and seeing the kids getting excited unwrapping presents!
Posted by conor at 9:45 PM
June 8, 2007
Superb weekend away
First weekend in June in New Zealand is a public holiday to "celebrate" our illustrious Queen's Birthday. We headed up to a cottage on Lake Heron Station, a high-country farm 2 hours drive directly west of Christchurch.
Cold, crisp, mostly calm, early winter days in some stunning scenery. We all had a great time. Here's a selection of images from the album.
Posted by conor at 2:41 PM
March 13, 2006
Late Summer holiday
Just back from a very relaxing holiday, just over 2 weeks down camping in Te Anau with the kids, and then to Wanaka to stay in a cottage on
Glendhu Station for another week with cousin Heather, and Granny & Grandad Boyd.
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