Don't believe the weathermen

Wednesday 27th January 2010

Firstly, an apology is apparently due as I made a spelling mistake yesterday and wrote the word 'is' twice, one after the other, or so I was told when I was talking to Lucy on the phone this morning. Doing this blog was not easy last night after a couple of beers and watching Andy Murray beat Rafa Nadal in the Aussie Open Tennis quarters. I will try better tonight Lucy though I am watching another quarter final, Djorkavic vs Tsonga as I write.

I read that after many years, the BBC are supposed to be getting rid of the the Met Office as their official weather forecasters due to the fact that their forecasts have been so poor recently. The replacement service is supposed to be more reliable and will come from New Zealand. My advice to the BBC is that they are equally poor out here if not worse. On the strength of the thunderstorms that were forecast today, we decided to stay in Auckland. Bucklands Beach is situated to the east of Auckland but because of the shape of the coastline, you have to travel south then east before going back north again, up a 'finger' that points northwards into the ocean. It is less than a mile between the east and west coasts of the finger and Bucklands Beach is situated on the west coast whilst the east side is named rather imaginitively, Eastern Beach (see the photo above pinched from a website where Bucklands is at the bottom and Eastern is at the top of the finger).

We decided to travel to the tip of the finger through the Howick Golf Course and into the Nature Reserve to Musick Point, named after a famous aviator in 1942 according to Wikipedia. We travelled as far as we could in the car and parked up but the wheel chair made another appearance and allowed us to venture down towards the tip. You can now see why we called the blog 'Have Wheelchair Will Travel' because without it, we would be very limited in what we see. As you will see from the steps in another photograph, it wasn't possible to push the chair any further unless I aimed it for the cliff edge but Kath politely asked me not to do that. She parked herself on a bench overlooking the sea whilst I ventured down the steps towards the beach at which point, it started to rain. The islands in the distance and Auckland to my left, disappeared behind a mist and the sky got darker. I made my way back to Kath and pushed her through the rain back to the car. As we got into the car, the heavens opened. I drove back towards the golf club and parked up again, overlooking a cliff with Auckland in the distance. We had a full 360 degree view of the sky around us and whilst it was heavy rain in one area, it was clear in another. We watched as small open fishing boats sped back to the safety of wherever they had come from and wondered what the driver was going through as the rain belted down in monsoon like conditions. After a few minutes, it was all over and I suggested that we went down to Eastern Beach for a coffee. As we arrived at the Esplanade Bar, there were one or two people on the beach but there was no sign of it having rained. The road and footpaths were toatally dry yet this was only a four minute drive from where we had just encountered the downpour. How strange is that? After coffee, we explored the beach area and liked what we saw. The clouds broke up and the sun came out so we went back home and made some sandwiches and returned to the beach for a picnic. Between the road and the beach is a grass bank and at the far end where we sat, there are picnic tables on the grass, located under trees. We sat and had lunch at one of the tables after which I settled down in a chair on the sand whilst Kath took out some book that she buries her face into from time to time. Some of the local Seagulls decided that they would share lunch with us. They came up very close and one nasty creature in particlar kept us amused as it attacked anything else that came near but whilst it flew at another fellow Seagull and chased it to towards the sea, a sparrow would come and take what we had thrown leaving Mr. Nasty somewhat confused to find nothing there when he returned. There is a nice picture of him above.

We had a really nice afternoon, the sun was beating down and the sky clear....where were the thunderstorms NZ Weathermen? I had a swim in the sea and we returned home at around 5pm. I went onto Bucklands Beach and had another swim. It was incredible how much colder the water was on Bucklands Beach to the Eastern Beach though the water at Bucklands shelves deeply very quickly whilst you can wade out for quite a way on the other side and still be only up to your waist.

The seven of us had a lovely dinner of chicken and mushroom stroganoff with rice and garlic bread after which I took some more pics of the sunset opposite the lounge window. Darren and I then went to the supermarket for a couple of things before venturing into Howick for a quick beer or two. They called last orders at 10pm !! but we were about to go home anyway. It's a bit early but as Darren explained, most people get up early for work and if there isn't the requirement for later opening hours, why stay open.

I have looked at the forecast for tomorrow and it is not bad but it is still saying thunderstorms for Taupo and Rotorua. Much as I would like to go, I think we will head north to Whangerei as it will be more settled there (hopefully). It is about a 2.5 hour drive so I had better call this a day if we are to get away early. I won't be seeing the end of the tennis tonight unfortunately.

Hope all you bloggers are enjoying the cold (Geraldine in Florida excepted). We have less than a week to go here now before heading for Australia, how quickly this is going.

As I write this, it will be mid-day Wednesday in the UK and the bathroom fitters will be setting about ripping the bathroom out at home. Vicki is starting a blog with some pics so that we know what is happening, I just hope it goes OK.

If we stay in the north tomorrow night there probably won't be a blog again unless the hotel has free wifi but not sure what we are doing at this stage.

Goodnight all..................A & K