What a lovely weekend

The weather was still vile on Friday night – no surprise there, it really has been a hard winter. We wandered into Petone to see how opening night was going at Lone Star. Had a margarita there and then bailed because of the crowd. Very nice meal at Gusto though.

On Saturday the forecast looked better for Paekakariki than Petone, so we headed up to the caravan about lunchtime.

It was still less than 10 degrees, but we headed off for a ride on the trails in Queen Elizabeth Park. Great fun and great exercise. Good for my confidence too, which I’ve been struggling to get back after my accident. If I went any slower downhill up be peddling backwards up the hill!

We got caught in a heavy downpour, but were only about 5 minutes from home, so toughed it out and got back to the caravan dripping wet.

Freezing overnight, but Sunday dawned to one of those magnificent winter days – clear and still, so the cold doesn’t seem to matter any more. Back on the bikes for another great ride – down to the beach for coffee, along the beach to Raumati and then back on the trails again.

Then it was time for the great shift – we needed to get off the site we were on at the caravan park as it had a long-term booking. After much wandering about, scratching of chins and working out the angle of the sun, we decided where to go.

So, pack a few things away and hook up the truck. Easy. Did I mention it’s been a vile winter? And that the ground is really wet? And that our truck and caravan combined weigh in at over 3.5 tonne? That’s right; we got stuck in the mud. Chewed the hell out the grass and then couldn’t go either forward or back.

Had to go and get the tractor from the camp owners and pull the van to another site. We’ll leave it there for a month or so till the ground dries out.

Of course now there’s lots of mud to clean off both vehicles…

All round, it was a great week of exercise. I aim to do at least 240 minutes a week, spread over 6 days. This week I got to 320 minutes.