adventure

PC 464 On to South Island

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Fourteen years on from Christchurch’s 2011 earthquake, there are many buildings still not rebuilt. The city’s cathedral is one and, rather than leave it a ruin like Coventry’s in the UK after the Second World War, it’s half rebuilt and the money’s run out.

This was taken from a book about the earthquake

And as it is now ….

Of course, today other parts of New Zealand need State Funding, and they argue Christchurch’s had enough!

Third-cousin Debs Nation used to work for Radio New Zealand and lives in Lyttelton, over the hill from the city. Her brother Gerald also lives in Christchurch; this photograph from some years ago!

Her son Henry and daughter-in-law Lou work for the civil service in the New Zealand capital Wellington, at the bottom of North Island. Her daughter Tessa runs an emporium of New Zealand-made products situated in The Arts Centre in Christchurch.

She’s called the store Frances Nation after her maternal grandmother.

It’s a huge success and one of those places where it’s impossible, once you’ve entered, not to purchase something!

More recently she and her wife Emma have opened ‘Peaches’, a café in Linewood Village. Given that her grandmother’s maiden name was Hope I had suggested she call it The Hope Café, then the one here could claim to be international, but it was not to be. Her father’s surname is Peach so …..

I sense that white New Zealand is attached to the United Kingdom by an invisible umbilical cord. The receptionist in The George Hotel in Christchurch was from Manchester and Mark, on the concierge’s staff, has a sister who holds a senior position in the NHS on north London. A woman who ran a gift shop where I bought some soap eggs ……

has a sister in England.

We were lucky enough to have some beautiful spring weather in Christchurch

and the city has a great atmosphere. The George Hotel where we stayed was a good choice, not something I could say about the carpet in the corridor outside our room. You would not want to be confronted by this on your return from a boozy night out!

South Island is rich with stunning scenery; for instance the beautiful Milford Sound in its Fiordland in the southwest,

…. but I wanted to revisit one particular view, the one as you come up out of Burke’s Pass on the way to Lake Tekapo. We took the direct route from Christchurch to Geraldine, a classic NZ farming town, and stopped for lunch.

Twenty minutes out of the town we pulled into one of those designated ‘Scenic Viewpoints’, the Geraldine Fairlie Lookout, and gazed over a classic New Zealand rural landscape.

Up through Burke’s Pass …… and you have to stop ….. and take this view in.

A very flat expanse of countryside and then, on the horizon, the Southern Alps. It reminded me of a trip many decades ago, driving down to Rome from Germany. Passed Strasbourg, passed Colmar and suddenly, before you get to Basel, you see the European Alps filling the horizon.

New Zealand’s Southern Alps

Breathtaking in every sense; I could have stayed a long time, just sitting, just looking, in silence, in awe. 100% Pure New Zealand!

We had booked a night in the Grand Suites Lake Tekapo, essentially accommodation only but to a high standard. Dave the South African manager says it’s very popular in the summer as a base for trekking, mountain biking, exploring.

Lake Tekapo is known for the remarkable blue colour of its water, caused by rock flour, finely ground particles of rock brought down by the glaciers at the head of the lake and held in suspension in the melt water.

Then above the lake, because of the purity of the atmosphere, the University of Canterbury has an observatory on Mount John to the west of the town, from where there are glorious views of the lake and to the west, of New Zealand’s highest mountain, Mount Cook (3755m); not to mention the stars in the night sky.

Mount Cook

Lake Tekapo fills what’s known as the Mackenzie Basin

The Church of the Good Shepherd is one of the most photographed buildings in the whole of New Zealand. Built in 1935, the architect Richard Harman based his design on sketches done by a local artist, Esther Hope. And here’s a family connection: Esther neé Barker married Deb Nation’s grandfather’s brother Tom Hope. Today a manager runs the agricultural and Merino sheep side of the Grampian Hope Farm leaving the family to concentrate on the artistic activities.

It’s difficult to get a photograph of the church without capturing some of the 600,000 tourists who now visit annually. (Note 1)

A donation into a wooden box inside the church and chatting up the volunteer who was there to ensure no one takes photographs inside, and there’s no wonder why people want to come and see this, heaven and earth and all between.

I sense we met a large proportion of the tourists, either in the supermarket buying supplies for their self-catering accommodation or where we had supper, as pork seemed to be everyone’s choice! They come because they want to experience what they’ve seen in photographs; I suspect they don’t want to see too many other people. There needs to be a balance between the wish of individuals to go and see places and the need to restrict numbers to preserve the very reason people go!

We drove back to Christchurch via the scenic route

which took us over the Rakaia gorge and river just north of Methven.

Back in The George in Christchurch for one night before our return via Singapore home. We were blessed with clear flying conditions as we flew over the Southern Alps

And later over the central section of Australia, which looks like another planet!

Richard 7th November 2025

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS We were lucky with the weather at Lake Tekapo. A week ago this was how the road from Geraldine looked!

Note 1 Thanks to the ‘clean’ option on my iPhone I can erase the tourists!

PC 463 More from Down Under

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Other highlights from our time in Auckland were attending a hot yoga session in the Hiyoga studio on Queens Street, experiencing the local rail network when we went out to Des & Gleneth’s in Meadowbank for supper, seeing Cornwall Park where we met Michael & Angela and Des & Gleneth for lunch in The Bistro, and being lucky enough to stay in the Sofitel Viaduct Hotel, which was very central and comfortable. During our time in Auckland, England’s Women’s team The Lionesses played Canada in the Rugby World Cup final on Saturday 27th September. Cousin Michael in Victoria on Vancouver Island found a pub at 0800 local time to watch the match; in Auckland the time for the kick-off was at 0400 local on the Sunday, so I watched the highlights!

After checking out of our hotel, we picked up a hire car and drove down to Rotorua. Known for its lively geothermal activity, it’s an area of New Zealand I wanted Celina to see. Of course, there is so much of New Zealand that’s gorgeous; another two hours’ drive further south we could have seen Mount Ruapehu, one of the country’s largest volcanos and Lake Taupo.

Mount Ruapehu

Rotorua is also the home of distant cousin Peter & Gwenda Russell and their daughter Anna & husband Paul. We checked in to the On the Point hotel with its glorious view across the lake ….

… and drove out to their home. I’d first met Peter & Gwenda in London almost twenty years ago, been to stay in their then house in Tauranga and now find them co-located with their daughter Anna. How we live out our later years is a challenge for all of us; The Russells are a good example of how to do it. Gwenda developed a huge interest in our Nation family story and remains curious and enthusiastic, adding for instance a little colour where none existed.

Anna & Paul recommended we visit Te Puia – ‘a place that changes you’ – and it did just that the following morning. Patrick, our engaging Māori guide,

took us first to the New Zealand Māori Arts & Crafts Institute, where students are trained in carving and weaving, using traditional techniques.

A Master craftsman was concentrating on a little wood carving while elsewhere an apprentice was sharpening a chisel. The craftswomen weave beautiful bags, made from New Zealand flax, but they are expensive; for instance, the second left on the bottom row around £210.

I found the whole enterprise fascinating and, in another life, might have become a student!

The Kiwi, a small flightless bird, is recognised as an icon of New Zealand and the human population are often referred to as Kiwis. It’s the smallest of the ‘ratites’ family, which includes ostriches, emus and rheas. In Te Puia there are a number of these nocturnal birds in a carefully controlled habitat. Obviously, photography is forbidden in their hide but this photograph shows a stuffed bird and its eggs. Think the eggs rather large for a small bird; must be painful?

Mud pools, grey and bubbling, …….

…… form the backdrop to the Pōhutu geyser, which erupts once or twice an hour. It’s easy to become completely mesmerised by the constantly evolving geothermal landscape but eventually we had to move on.

We left, as the brochure suggests, changed, thoughtful,

.. and drove back to Auckland.

As you do when you hire a car, you look for the last possible petrol station, so you deliver the car back with a full tank of fuel. We had a very new Yaris ‘something’ and I knew the fuel cap was on the passenger side of the car. We pulled up to the pump, I walked around to the panel covering the fuel cap and pressed ….. and pressed …. and pulled ….. and pressed again …… I looked in the car for some lever ….. couldn’t find one, went back and pressed again. Just then James, or Nick or Good Samaritan appeared; filling up his own truck, he’d seen me making a fool of myself, Googled the make of my car and came around and said: “Oh! There’s a level under the dash somewhere” …. and so there was, not obvious (obviously!).  

We caught an Air New Zealand flight to Christchurch, a city a third of the way down South Island and, glancing out of the window as we crossed the coast, I could make out Farewell Spit where great grandmother Eve was shipwrecked in 1877. (See PCs 169 Shifting Sands & Feathers and 170 100% Pure New Zealand January 2020)

New Zealand lies on one of the many fault lines of the earth’s crust, this one between the Indo-Australian and Pacific Plates, part of the Pacific Basin Ring of Fire. To keep it in perspective, about 14,000 earthquakes occur in and around the country each year, of which some 175 are big enough to be felt. Within living memory, the February 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake, also known as the Napier earthquake, remains the country’s deadliest natural disaster. Two hundred and fifty-six people died when the quake, with a magnitude of 7.8, devasted the Hawke’s Bay region; aftershocks continued for two weeks.

The disaster prompted a review of the country’s building codes, deemed woefully inadequate. By way of illustration, today there are only four buildings in the Hawke’s Bay region taller than five storeys. In Christchurch on 22nd February 2011, a total of 185 people died, more that 7000 were injured and over 10,000 made homeless when a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck the city. (Note 1) It caused over NZ$52.2 billion’s worth of damage.

If you live in a part of the world which is prone to earthquakes, there’s not much you can do about it, except be vigilant ….. and maybe have a ‘Go Bag’ always handy! We were planning to stay for a few days in Christchurch, so the topic wasn’t mentioned – a little like not watching an aeroplane disaster film when you’re about to fly somewhere!

Continues in PC 464 ….. next week

Richard 31st October 2025

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 Seventeen days before the first Nation family get together in Auckland.

PC 453 Travelling in August

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It’s Sod’s Law (Note 1) that it’s only after you leave for the airport for your flight, the airline texts you to say there’s a delay. Fortunately for us going to Lisbon last week, it was only an hour. My mother-in-law and Toni, returning to Portugal after a retreat in France in July, were told of a nine-hour delay in their TAP flight as they were in the taxi from their Parisian hotel to Orly Airport. Nothing one can do ….. just shrug ….. and resign oneself to a little more time to browse the airside shops ….. have another coffee ….. or debate whether paying for the use of an airport lounge is worth it …. if indeed there is space!

Having checked in, we accept the offer of a printed Boarding Pass, despite having downloaded it earlier; sometimes it’s just easier than searching for it in one’s smartphone – did I add it to my Wallet, takes a screenshot or is it still in my email? I am aware there’s been an international standardisation of the size of a passport, so why isn’t the boarding pass the same size?

A tall chap in Baggage Security asked whether I had any fruit in my backpack; given that his shift had started at 0300, he was remarkably alert! He’d smiled when he’d seen Francisquinha, who always travels with her front paws, ears and head out of my yellow backpack, but needed to delve down into all the stuff you pop in at the last minute. Actually in this case the chemical sensors had noticed the four Conference pears I was taking out to Portugal, to make an Upside-down Pear Cake for the family birthday. Establishing they were genuine, we repacked and went to get something to eat on the plane for lunch.

Regular readers may remember that, in my last visit to the Hope Café, Sami had quoted something from one of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses series: “But Catherine’s journey had been more moving staircase than slippery slope; a slow downwards progression. Looking across at the people heading upwards and wondering if that was a better idea. But somehow knowing she’d have to reach the bottom before she could change direction.” At London Gatwick’s South Terminal, there seemed plenty of people on the Up escalator who looked as they weren’t sure where they wanted to be …. and vica versa! And mid-morning in August, it’s constant, this stream of potential airline passengers, going up, coming down, mingling, stopping, gapping, talking, confused and occasionally running in the direction of a departure gate as if they’ve remembered why they were there in the first place.

With more time to kill than usual, we explored some of the shops, wondering whether the prices were better than on the High Street or just hiked for those in urgent need to find something they realised they had forgotten to pack. The salesgirl in Superdry said they sold lots of the latter!

I got another espresso and we found a spare place to sit. On the bench next to us was a young man selling some App over his laptop. It’s hard not to lend half an ear ….. and when he’d finished I asked him about it. It was an app that allowed you to view the layout of a restaurant in 3D, so you could select a table – not too close to the kitchens, or loos, or main entrance perhaps. It cost you 10% of your bill – the restaurant kept 50%, the app developers 50%. Sounded interesting – if you eat out a lot in swanky expensive places!

But in some ways I was more interested in him, just buzzing with energy and life. He, a Spaniard living in Dubai, and his friend had just finished ‘A’ Levels at Wellington College (Note 2); they were flying to Sweden. Good to chat to young people with an obvious zest for life ….. when you know that, sadly, a huge proportion of young adults in the UK are on some form of benefits.

Despite the fact I’ve written over four hundred and fifty postcards, I still occasionally struggle with being grammatically correct, often ignoring a Microsoft prompt if I feel it sounds better! A great believer in grammar reflecting society’s trends! I have got better with spelling but not immune to an incorrect word getting through my editor’s reread ….. and reread! I love the comments my scribbles engender, even if they’re critical of my writing; never too late to learn so, please, keep them coming, even if they’re a little pedantic.

One of the joys of an August holiday is you get more time to read, if that’s your bailiwick; it’s certainly mine. I enjoy the novels of American Michael Connelly, such as his Lincoln Lawyer series or the thrillers featuring detective Harry Bosch. At the weekend I finished his latest, ‘Nightshade’. Being a bit of a pedant (!) I wrote to his website:

“There are some interesting differences in English and American English. For instance, we ‘go for a ride’ whereas you would say we are going for a ‘horseback ride’! And I don’t think we use the term ‘sailboat’, preferring dinghy, yacht and motorboat. As far as yachts are concerned, in ‘Nightshade’ there was reference to a ketch. Not sure whether the main character was deliberately unaware of nautical nomenclature (?) but by definition a ketch is a two-masted yacht, the smaller mast, called a Mizzen, stepped forward of the rudder. The other two-masted yacht is a yawl, where the smaller mast is stepped aft of the rudder, with its boom often overhanging the stern of the yacht. A single masted yacht can be referred to as a sloop. I read that Michael doesn’t read emails …… so do with this information what you want!”

His PA Jane replied saying she would pass on my email to Michael. I obviously hope the great man will reply personally!

Richard 22nd August 2025

Estoril Portugal

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 Another term for Murphy’s Law, which states that if something can go wrong, it will.

Note 2 ‘A’ Levels and Alaska are this week’s common words

PC 432 Hope as Always (Continued)

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There’s never enough time to catch up with everyone in the Hope Café so I make an effort to see Sami and Mo particularly. Anyone else is a bonus! Sami and his partner Lisa get a coffee, decline some pancakes that Libby is trying to get rid of, and join me at one of the bigger tables.

“You’re looking well, Richard! Must be all that ‘freezing-your-b*****ks-off’ in that CryoBright place; that and the hot yoga you’re addicted to!”

“Hello you two! Good to see you both and yes, Sami, not a crime to be addicted to something, surely! And I have lengthened my time in the cold chamber to the maximum they recommend, 5 minutes. Got carried away last Wednesday, singing along with the music in my headphones. Came out and found I had an audience! Sounds travel!!”

“You’ve sailed thousands of miles, Richard, so you’d have been shocked when those two ships collided in the North Sea. (Ed. On 10th March) How is it possible these days?”

“Ah! Sami, you, like all the news releases, talk of how the two ships ‘collided’ or that they ‘crashed into each other’, inferring both were to blame. I really don’t think it could be the fault of the oil tanker MV Stena Immaculate, sadly no longer immaculate, peacefully at anchor, displaying all the appropriate signage and one of eight other large tankers and container ships at anchor off the Humber Estuary. At anchor you hoist a large black ball in the fore part of the ship; at night you additionally need an all-round white light.”

The MV Stena Immaculate with a large hole on her port side

“Do you need to have a human being on ‘anchor watch’? I read that the Portuguese-registered container ship, MV Solong (Note 1), was steaming south off the East Yorkshire coast at its full speed of 16kts when it rammed the MV Stena Immaculate. The impact caused the Stena Immaculate to be displaced some 200 metres. The Solong’s gross tonnage was 7852 and momentum, if I remember my mathematics, is mass multiplied by speed. What’s that expression? ‘What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?’

“It’s brought to mind that time in Cyprus, described in PC 231 ‘Ropes, Warps and Sheets’ from May 2021, when I was part of the crew sailing from Akrotiri to Dhekelia, and we anchored off the beach. The skipper didn’t leave anyone on board as he judged it safe. But there was a local wind that blew in the late morning. Someone alerted the skipper as he was having his eggs & bacon …. read the postcard.

A still from some Super 8 cinefilm of Highlight on the beach

In the same postcard I wrote about skippering St Barbara IV, a Nicholson 43, from Liverpool to Oban on the west coast of Scotland, years later. A day or so after visiting the Isle of Man, we anchored off the little village of Lamlash on the eastern side of the Isle of Arran. It wasn’t exactly sheltered from the northeast and when the wind shifted in the middle of the night, the chap on watch woke me, so I could assess the situation; it was 0310. We started the engine, raised the anchor and motored across to shelter in the lee of Holy Isle.

To those of us who sail, Sami, it’s unbelievable that this could happen, given radar and watch-keeper systems. Clearly a human error, ultimately by the captain of the Solong, who has now been charged with Gross Negligence Manslaughter, as one crewman sadly died. I read that the Solong had travelled through this area of the North Sea three times in the last month. However, the description of the collision reminded me of one of those regular reasons people say when they have a car accident and fill out the claim form: “The lamppost just jumped into the road.” (See PS)

“On to more local issues, I am glad I accepted the compensation offered by the Post Office last year, as some of my colleagues are still waiting. Beggars’ belief how bureaucrats can be so obstructionist! (See PC 420 Contentious Issues in the UK for 2025)”

“You’ve come a long way in 4 years, Sami, and it’s been a delight to see you and Lisa happy and excited about life. You know my daughter bought her late maternal grandmother’s wreck of a house and has spent the last 7 months working on it? Well, it’s now habitable enough and they move in tomorrow; still a great deal of work to do but the financial pot is empty and needs to be refilled.”

“You’re going to tell me a story of some blunder or other?

“I am, Sami, as it reinforces the wonderful adage if you’re a DIY enthusiast, ‘measure twice, cut once.’ The builder who’s been responsible for most of the work is a lovely chap and a carpenter by trade, so he of all people should follow the traditional advice. I was at the house a couple of weeks ago and thought that a new balustrade looked too low for safety. I mentioned it to my son-in-law Sam, took a photograph and reinforced my thought by WhatsApp when I got home.

Sam mentioned it to the builder who protested that it was absolutely fine. Then a day later he quietly admitted he’d measure the height from one floor level and not the other, a difference of 10cms. He’s going to have to remake it from scratch!”

“That extra 10cms could make the difference between a boisterous boy going over the top or not! Listen, we know you’re off to Rio but when you come back, can we find a date for you to come and have some supper with us? After Easter maybe?”

“That will be delightful (See PCs 329 & 330 ‘Supper with Sami’ April 2023 when they came to us). Why don’t you send us some options and we can pencil something in. And now I need to get going ….. lovely to see you both …..”

This conversation was over a week ago as we are now in Barra da Tijuca, a western suburb of Rio de Janeiro!!

View from our AirBnB apartment

Richard 28th March 2025

Rio de Janeiro

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS The still smouldering MV Solong has been towed to the Scottish port of Aberdeen, arriving yesterday.

Note 1There’s a joke here somewhere: ‘so long, farewell …..’ ???? (The Sound of Music?)

PC 426 It’s a Fine Line ….

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I was going to scribble how it’s often a fine line between success and failure, between life and death …… but I thought I would consult my Oxford Illustrated Dictionary and see what it says about ‘line’. Wow! Over a column of the three-columns-to-a-page layout devoted to the word ‘line’.

Most would immediately understand it is a noun and that it joins two points. We have telegraph and power lines; lines marking the boundaries of, for instance, a tennis court; life lines on the palm of your hand; lines that connect points having common property, like an isobar, or the Equator or lines of longitude or latitude; lines to be learned by actors, as opposed to reading between the lines to discover a meaning not obvious or expressed; a line of poetry remembered years later; somewhere to hang your washing, the clothes line; words to be written out as a school punishment; naval ships in formation are often line astern or line abreast;

tram lines in cities or railway lines criss-crossing the country; in Rugby Union forwards form a line to receive the ball from the touchline, a ‘line out’. As a verb, troops could line the streets for ceremonial occasions; you could line a drawer with paper or you could line your stomach, anticipating drinking too much alcohol!

My own fine line, my brush with death in 1991, remains very clear today. As a passenger (in car A in diagram) being driven into Canberra, Australia during the rush hour, traffic was heavy in both directions. Suddenly we were aware of a car (car B) overtaking the oncoming traffic, coming at us head-on. There was nowhere to go. My friend decided to swing right, although instinctively left would have been the better option!

The oncoming car swung to their right; a collision seemed inevitable. The only touch was the paintwork on the passenger-side wing mirror; a very fine line indeed.

Writing about lines, fine or not, remined me of a question I often asked my clients in their first coaching session. I would draw nine dots on a piece of paper, thus:

then ask them to join them up, using four straight lines, without taking their pencil off the paper. We habitually see things that aren’t necessarily there, because it gives us a comfortable feel, recognition of the familiar. I recall that about 25% of my clients were successful. Trump is thinking ‘outside of the box’ with his ideas about Gaza – makes me wonder whether he would be in the 25% or not?

Last weekend in Europe we had the second round of the Six Nations (Note 1) Rugby Union Competition. England were playing France; it was a very good game to watch and the lead changed hands throughout, although a last minute try by England meant we won 26 points to 25 …. a fine line. (Note 2)

Words which mean the same are collectively called synonyms, like ask, question or inquire, or beautiful, gorgeous and dazzling. You can also have a phrasal synonym, like ‘fine line’ and ‘hair’s breadth’. Typically a hair strand is between 0.03mm and 0.08mm in diameter; one nominal value often chosen is 75µm. Such measures can be found in many cultures; for instance in the Burmese system of Long Measure a tshan khyee, the smallest unit is literally a ‘hair’s breadth’.

A straight line between two points can be at any angle, but geometrically graphs always have at least two axes, one horizontal and one vertical. My pedantic nature is offended if something isn’t level, horizontal or vertical. Sometimes it’s a fine line, even half a degree or so. When we moved into our apartment in Amber House after its conversion in 2012, a couple of light switches were not straight; given the availability of spirit levels, it was a good example of poor workmanship.  

When sailing, if the wind is coming from the direction you want to go in, you have to ‘beat’, with the sails as flat as possible. It’s a very fine line to steer the yacht at its optimum; too much into the wind and sails start being back-winded; too far off the wind and the yacht heels so much, reducing the efficiency of the sail area. When you get it right, it’s as if the yacht ‘lifts its skirt and flies’; yachts are always female by tradition so this expression should be safe in this sensitive world.

For James Howells it’s still a fine line between success and abject misery! In Wales in 2013 he had a bitcoin wallet worth £4 million; its password was stored on his hard drive. His girlfriend, possibly ex by now (?), threw out the hard drive with some rubbish, presumably without knowing what it was. Somewhere under a mountain of household waste in some council refuse tip is a hard drive which, if retrieved, could unlock, at current bitcoin value, about a billion pounds sterling. He’s even offered the council millions if he’s allowed to successfully search for it, so far without success. 

The polarisation of everything, including politics, views about this and that, personal opinions, is making society more fractious, the line between acceptable and unacceptable extremely thin, like living on a knife-edge. With the increase in false news stories and conspiracy theories, it’s surely time for us all to apply good old fashioned common sense and move towards the centre.  

David Lammy the UK Government’s Foreign Secretary: “There’s a fine line, as you know, between free speech and hate speech.” Maybe I could add that it’s also a fine line between love and hate, other extremes. So, let’s concentrate on ‘Love’, particularly on this romantic day?

Richard St Valantine’s Day 2025

Hove

www.postcardscribles.co.uk

PS Last Summer, a tree near my brother-in-law’s apartment in Estoril Portugal looked as though it could do with about one third taken off it. Someone asked whether that should be from the top or the bottom. (Just think about that?)

Note 1 The six nations comprise England, Scotland, Wales, France, Italy and Ireland

Note 2 The previous weekend Ireland had beaten England 27-22.