Outdoors in Otaki

Thursday morning 12th found us driving on SH1 with neighbour Wendy to Otaki, which is a small town in the farming region about 15 minutes north of Waikanae.

The main aim of the expedition (for the girls) was to collect driftwood for the Poo Corner Garden, as Otaki Beach is rich in such treasures owing to the mouth of the nearby Otaki River, which we’d previous;y visited early in January (See my earlier blogs ‘Otaki Forks’ and ‘Back to Otaki Town’). I went along to visit the Farmlands Co-op, in search of availability and pricing options for bulk dog food, chicken feed, and possible materials for the proposed construction of a proper veggie garden and plant nursery. 

I drew a blank as far as the construction materials were concerned, and then returned to the deserted beach where I’d left the treasure hunters. As luck usually has it, the girls found more driftwood than the wagon could carry, even with the loading seats all in the ‘down’ position.

A fairly large proportion of the Otaki population is of Maori culture, and the town is a centre for Maori learning with a large educational college, and street benches, shops and beach decor all reflect the Maori culture.

(Above): Large driftwood tree trunks which have been carved in much detail, much as the plentiful tattoos stand (informally) along the vegetated part of the coastline at Otaki Beach.  

 

(Above): Wendy and Jeanette rest up a bit for some water after their scavenging expedition. In the background are typical little homes, which, as building structures are probably not worth that much, whilst the ground on which they are located are each worth a king’s ransom. The blue one on the right displays a large “Everton” sign in the front window. No guessing as to their favourite sport!

As Wendy was previously a resident in this town, she served as a guide for a tour around the residential and commercial areas of Otaki. We visited a large nursery (‘Strik’) owned by a Dutch family, supplying supermarkets and other seedling, flower and plant retailers.

I was surprised (and pleased) to discover a paint factory in River Road, Enviro Paints, who manufacture and distribute a comprehensive range of paints throughout New Zealand. Their website is professionally balanced and is very informative. Well done, guys.

As one enters the town from the south on SH1, one of the very first places you encounter is a quaint old restaurant/cafe. River Cottage Cafe (which was formerly known as ‘Brown Sugar’) is now run by Rebecca and Taaki Te Momo. Fully licensed, this café  offers evening meals as well as daytime. There is a great outdoor garden in which to relax when the weather is fine. We stopped of for a coffee around their cosy fireplace, and then strolled around their outdoor section afterwards.

(Above): Part of the outdoor dining area in the River Cottage Cafe grounds. Being a Thursday morning, with cold-ish weather which was rather ‘iffy’, there were no takers to sit outside, most preferring the comfort from the log fire indoors.

(Above): The interior of a garage/shed which has been converted into an informal coffee ‘lounge’, with a play area for the kiddies.

(Above): Jeanette and Wendy discuss the effectively of a mirror window in the coffee lounge.

Buildlogue #4

Friday 13 June 2014: Day 31 – We’ve had another 5mm of rain, but today is pleasantly sunny and the grass is starting to dry out a bit.

Earlier, I took a call from John (In future I’ll refer to him as ‘Builder John’) advising that Wednesday 18 June will be set a Build Day 1, as he plans to start pegging out the building site that day, and Bobcat Bryce (In future I’ll refer to him as ‘Earthmover Bryce’, in case you confuse him with any of the other Bryces with whom I am acquainted) will start removing the topsoil, in preparation for placing the hardfill.

I Am A Time-Waster

“Where do these folk find all their energy? They’re always on the go, and always seem ready for the next ball before the previous one has even had a chance to reach the boundary.”

Standing in the little queue of more than a dozen people at the buffet breakfast table, I glance down at my watch. 6:22 am. The view out of the nearby window indicates two things: darkness and heavy rain pelting on the panes.

I have been on very few extended group coach tours. If one single trip qualifies as “a few”, then I’ve been on a few. At the turn of the century, in fact – Y2k. A Trafalgar U.K. tour from Chelsea, London travelling northwards up the east coast of England to Edinburgh and then back to London along the west coast via a short stab into Wales.

Standing in the queue, I am in the 18th century Blackwell Grange hotel in Darlington, which is a town off the A1 south of Newcastle on Tyne. I have just checked, and our coach driver and tour guide is outside the front entrance, his bus warming up and already welcoming some of our fellow-travellers aboard for the trip to Hadrian’s wall and Scotland.

Back home in Cape Town at the time, I would have been preparing to leave for work (if I had been working at that time). I was struck by the enthusiasm and energy exuded by fellow-travellers – they were in this holiday with earnest and devotion, and would be damned if they allowed any party-pooper to spoil the experience.

The remainder of the tour unfolded in the same fashion – every moment of each day was tasted, savoured and enjoyed to the fullest despite the inclement weather at times. In fairness to Trafalgar, their tour didn’t end early in the afternoons – no, they lasted till after dark, giving one just enough time to scrub up and have a quick beer before going in for the evening meal, where arranged.

I’m not sure whether life should be all that serious, but most of us could revise the way we use and enjoy each of the days remaining to us. Like saving a haircut appointment for the hours of darkness, where possible or wait until a rainy day when one cannot fully utilise the outdoors… Like perhaps not to be writing a blog in the middle of a sunny day, like I am currently doing?

Buildlogue #3

Day 28: 10 June 2014 – The rainfall during the past 24 hours ending 8:00am was 28mm

(Above): This morning Bianca kindly collected the Building Consent from KCDC in Paraparaumu. You can imagine our surprise at the presentation. The complete set of documents are packed in a stiff wallet/folder, which is sponsored by a number of full-colour adverts.

(Above): Unlike anything I experienced with The City of Cape Town building department when we built at Strandweg and Hamerkop Road, the Kapiti Coast Council is extremely thorough, possibly to the point of becoming anal. The covering letter guides you through all the requirements, leaving no doubt as to your responsibilities.

(Above): All important points and amendments are printed on the appropriate documents in red, with some of them high-lighted in yellow print-marker. It is your responsibility to ensure that each and every inspection is done by the appropriate officials. They must make not two, not three, but guess how many….  Yes a dozen!

Buildlogue #2

Buildlogue Day 27: 9 June 2014 – Having spoken to the examining official this morning, I felt better than the Building Consent was imminently forthcoming. As luck would have it, she called again just after 12 noon.

“Mr Andrews, building consent BC140238 is ready. If you’d like to pop in to our offices, you can collect it at the reception desk anytime.”

Since then I have contacted John, who confirmed that Bryce, the earthmover, will be bringing his Bobcat around within the next few days, weather permitting. Barry, our architect, has emphasised that one of the important phrase in New Zealand building lingo is just that: Weather permitting.

All Fall Down!

While living in the suburbs, and being involved with work most of our lives, most folk are only able to devote little snippets of time to the aspects of nature around them. With urbanisation has come fewer trees and more concrete.

This morning, nature decided that the overlap between autumn and winter had been around for long enough, and proceeded with the final rushed efforts to complete the leaf-shedding process. Even as I walked around the garden, camera in hand to capture the colours and forms, I could see small batches of leaves being released and falling to the ground in the windless conditions. This was something I’d never really witnessed in such detail in all my years.

I would like to share some of the scenes with you, without further comment.

Oxalis tuberosa

How on earth did we survive pre-Wikipedia?

The rich would pop along to their study and pull out the appropriate volume of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Joe Soap (and yours truly) would have popped down to the public library to search through the non-fiction section to try to locate something that vaguely resembled the subject matter of our query.

The rest would run to ask their mother. And she would tell them the truth. Of course

But nowadays I rely tremendously on Professor Wiki.

And I needed to refer to him again this morning when a neighbour brought us a bowl of various home-grown produce. Among the vegetables was a yam, which she described as a “kind of potato.”

Naturally, I have only heard of yams from Americans, so this creature is entirely new to me. It got roasted with some other vegetables the other night and tasted quite cool, if my opinion on such a tiny sample is worth anything. The neighbour has promised to bring us some tubers for planting, so I’m looking forward to anew gardening and cooking experience in the near future. I will keep readers posted.

Some checking on Wiki indicates the various names this vegetable is known by in other countries:

• Apilla in Bolivia
• Apiña in Bolivia and Peru
• Batata-baroa or mandioquinha (literally, "little mandoica") in Brazil, a name shared with the unrelated arracacha.
• Cuiba or quiba in Venezuela
• Hibia, huasisai, or ibi in Colombia
• Macachin or miquichi in Venezuela
• Papa extranjera in Mexico
• Truffette acide in France
• Yam in many other places, such as Polynesia and New Zealand, where the Discorea vegetables known elsewhere as yams are generally very uncommon.

1944–2014: 70 years on…

The Normandy landings, codenamed Operation Neptune, were the landing operations on 6 June 1944 (termed “D-Day”) of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord. The largest seaborne invasion in history, the operation began the invasion of German-occupied western Europe, led to the restoration of the French Republic, and contributed to an Allied victory in the war. - Wiki

Road to St Andrew’s: Conclusion

This is Part III of my photo-walk along Ngatiawa Road from 53 Kents Road to St Andrew’s church. Below is an aerial view of the countryside along the walk, with the orange labels referring to the two previous parts of the blog post. We start at “P”

(Above): The bus-stop at the T-junction of Mangaone South Road with Ngatiawa Road. This is also the terminus where the Paraparaumu College / Reikorangi school bus loads off his final batch of kids, where we collect Brynn and Tyler at 3:50 each afternoon.

(Above): Reaching St Andrew’s is now a reasonable target, with just less than one kilometre left. The yellow speed advisory in the distance reads “45” at the approach to an S-bend (labelled “Q” in the aerial) in Ngatiawa Road.

(Above): A short distance from St Andrew’s is the Reikorangi Pottery Cafe and Farm Park. A small family run business in a foresty/rivery setting, we have been there once for tea and scones. (labelled “R”)

(Above): About 150 metres further down the road, I reach the up-gradient to the junction of Ngatiawa Road with Reikorangi and Akatarawa Roads (labelled “S” in the aerial). In the “V” formed by the roads is this well-known historic tiny church.

Road to St Andrew’s: Part II

In Part I of this series of posts, I showed photos [“A” to “I” coloured orange] of a walk which I called The Road to St Andrew’s.

The first close encounter with a living being, except for flocks of grazing sheep every here and there, were a  couple of extremely well-dressed Dobbins:

…near one of the many streams which filter down through the hills and feed the Waikanae River in the Reikorangi Valley, as below:

After the Deck House, one encounters an old cottage which appears to be made of corrugated metal, and I suspect is being used as a shearing venue and woolshed. I like to refer to it as The Red Shed . Anyone care to hazard a guess why?

(Above): The Red Shed at 119 Ngatiawa Road (labelled “M”). I wonder what it might cost to renovate and to restore back to living accommodation – it looks structurally quite good, on a nice flat section of land… From Google Earth, I extracted the following frontal view:

(Above): A short distance further at 111, is Riverstone, a Bed and Breakfast place called Riverstone Garden Cottage [labelled “K”]. It seems to be the perfect place to stay overnight or for a weekend. Eppie and Paul Murton are the owners.

(Above): A really charming and peaceful country river-setting for Riverstone Garden Cottage as extracted from their website.

(Above): [“L” on the map] This shows the typical paddock view towards the river for many properties along Ngatiawa Road. Traffic is not all that frequent along this road.

Three huge old trees stand like professors outside their college. This is location “N” on our aerial Google photo.

My,my, how quickly one can cover distance when you’re having fun taking photos of the different views. Here we are with Mangaone South Road, which I had set as the end of Stage II of the three-part walk.

Part III of The Road to St Andrew’s is continued in the next blog post.

Road to St Andrew’s (Part I )

True to my earlier promise, I took a slow walk along Ngatiawa Road last Friday in the direction of Waikanae, and consequently the local church St Andrew’s, of which I have previously blogged. This is a photo collection of the first section of the Road to St Andrew’s.

(Above): The road map outlining the photo-stroll from Kents Road [Bottom right (“A”)] to the Church [Left centre] at the Reikorangi Road/Ngatiawa Road split. I will mention the alphabetic references in this and the next couple of blog posts.

(Above): The steep uphill from Shane’s Corner [“C”] is probably one of the route’s narrowest parts. On one occasion I had to negotiate the verge with a truck pulling a horse-box coming the other way, and a concrete mix-truck on another occasion.

(Above): Once over Shane’s Hill, you get a long straight past the very neat Cru Farm with its couple of horses, as below.

Cru Farm [marked “E” on our map] and the hillside sheep property directly opposite [see below] [marked “F” on our map], have been on the open market for quite some time. The size, nature and location of the properties are such that only a particular type of buyer would be interested.

(Above): The next section of road, what I call The Pines Chicane [marked “G” on the map]. After any stormy windy weather, this section of road takes on a rich brown colour, as the wind-fall pine needles from the lane of tall pine trees regularly carpet the surface in a thick layer.

(Above): As one exits the Pines Chicane [marked “H”], there is a steep embankment to the right with tall trees. Here one looks down a number of metres to see the remains of the wreckage of a car which, I understand, was out of control and careered off the road and down the steep embankment, coming to rest against the trunks of some of the sturdy trees below. A constant reminder to motorists (who are aware of its presence) to drive extra carefully along this stretch of narrow road.

Also at Pines Chicane, I encountered a large number of attractively coloured and decorated toadstools (mushrooms?) – Click here to discover an expert’s opinion as to what the difference is. This particular one [growing at location “I” on our aerial photograph] was roughly the size of a regular saucer. (For the mycologist readers, please keep an eye open for a blog post in the near future showing some exotic mushrooms I discovered at Goat Hill.)

 
(Above): Something one doesn’t easily notice when driving along this road is the above extensive nursery installation adjacent to Amanda’s Kapiti Boutique Cattery at 216 Ngatiawa Road.

 
(Above): A short distance from the Cattery on the opposite side of the road is what I call the Deck House. This is the view of the valley and hills from the road directly behind the house, giving an idea of the breath-taking views from the deck itself.

That is one-third (give or take) of The Walk to St Andrew’s. Continued in Part II