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, and a great walk up the Bealey Valley at Arthurs Pass. 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
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
