Court-side dining at the Auckland tennis Centre.
The Auckland Heineken Open is part of the ATP World Series and today, after a 50Km cycle (the count down to New Zealand Ironman is well and truly on), we all popped along for a days spectating as our summer holiday continues. Continue reading
Always happy to help when people have Rugby questions. Here I provide Buck Shelford with the benefit of my rugby genius.
Today my very good friend Sam Walsh invited me to the NZ Rugby Foundation’s charity race day at Auckland’s Ellerslie racecourse (the charity raises money for injured players and other worthy causes). The Radio Network, which Sam works for, had a table on the Cuvée enclosure which is where the great and the good hang out and I half expect to appear in the background of celebrity gossip magazines photographs in the next week or so.
Fun at Whangarei Heads.
A trip to Kerikeri via Whangarei is on the cards and my plan it to complete the first leg (to Whangarei) by bike as part of my training for the New Zealand Half Ironman in March. So I leave Auckland (crossing the Waitamata by ferry as, to my knowledge, there is no way of getting across by bike) to begin the 200km ride to Whangerei where the plan Continue reading
After the Auckland Harbour Crossing swim.
Today is the Auckland Harbour swim so I get up at at 06.30 to watch Ireland loose to the All Blacks (the game turned on the penalty try. But the All Blacks failing to dominate Ireland in the way they might have done 3 or 4 years ago – more evidence perhaps that they are not the unbeatable force they have been in recent years). Afterwards Ruth ran me into town to catch the ferry to the start of the Harbour Swim (http://www.oceanswim.co.nz/) a 2.8Km swim across the Waitamata harbour from Bayswater (on the North Shore) to Viaduct Harbour (on the South Shore).
1200 people competed and, at the race briefing before the start, it was noted that the Orca Whales (killer whales) had been seen in the vicinity of the race course that morning (they have been swimming around the Waitamata Harbour all week and we’d see three when we were picnicking at Narrow Neck Beach the previous day). The safety advice was “if any one wants to pull out they can get a lift back in the boat”, nobody pulled out.
Anyway, the race was completed without any drama and, having prepared more thoroughly it was a lot easier than last year. But I was disappointed that, again, my navigation / awareness of the currents let me down and I certainly did not take the most direct route across !! Gillian & Hywel and Ruth and the children met me the other end and we stayed for the award ceremony (with overall prizes and age group prizes up to over 70s !)
The harbour swim is a great event and I determine that it will be a life ambition of mine to make the podium. The only conceivable way that this will happen is if I am still able to swim the distance when I get to 70 years of age as there were only 2 people in this age group. So that’s the plan, see you same place same time in 2038 !
Royal New Zealand Navy Band (thanks to Eventfinda.co.nz)
Today it’s my father-in-law Hywel’s birthday. So Gillian and Hywel popped across on the ferry to Devonport for a day out. Devonport is one of the oldest suburbs in Auckland having been first settled in 1840 (70 years after our house in Wales was built) and is also home to the Royal New Zealand navy and its 2 frigates, 6 patrol boats and 3 miscellaneous support craft.
Raglan NZ, one of the stop-offs of the Endless Summer movie.
Time to get out of Auckland and with ‘free’ petrol why wouldn’t you (I have unlimited petrol and a company car for a flat fee each month). Today we decided to head down to Raglan on the West Coast of the Waikato. As a wannabe surfer I am aware of Raglan from its appearance in the 1966 classic surf film ‘Endless Summer’ so this trip is inspired as much by that as by a desire to see as many parts of New Zealand as we can while we are here. Continue reading
NewZealandly 