walking the dog

In Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, the powers that be have created miles and miles of limestone or concrete paths, for bicycles and walkers.

Miles of them.

Right through the wetlands and the farms and  down the beaches and through the country. You can walk and walk.

Tourists and locals, able and disabled  alike can enjoy the absolute peace of this glorious place without the presence of cars or four wheelers or motorbikes. Just the quiet. Nice easy walking. No fees or doormen, or campers or gates, or fear. Some start out along the roads or railway lines then veer off into the country. Just wonderful peaceful walking.  If I lived back here now I would be on these boardwalks every day.

The beach is still a magical place.  Though there is now an explosion of beach flowers along the waterfront.  It is wonderful.

 

 

Along the foreshore in Napier, New Zealand are a series of concrete bunkers.  

These were gun emplacements  built during World War Two when the threat of invasion from the Japanese was a very real and incredibly scary possibility – for a little country such as New Zealand.   (There are other coastal strongholds that are even older from the 1800’s when it was thought the Russians were going to take over – but we have never been invaded, not in an aggressive way anyway. )   The bunker we found  was  from WWII.

When we were kids these were over grown with grasses and beach trees and were the hang outs of less than  savoury characters. Though we still climbed all over and inside them making up our own war games when the unsavoury characters were gone. Against our mothers express commands I might add.

We are still playing.

Good morning!

Today  is a glorious day.  Since the wedding it has warmed up beautfully, of course, so  we are going to be showing our visitors even more of Hawkes Bay today. I will be showing you too. When I post tomorrow.

I almost made a terrible error yesterday. I forgot that the blog fed straight to my Face Book page and the bride asked us not to put any pictures of her wedding on Face Book.  This is why the images of the day were so subtle. But still. One does not want to get in trouble with ones new daughter in law!   So I took off the feed to facebook yesterday.  When the ban on photos is lifted I will go back and put some beautiful wedding pictures back in.  And today we are back to normal blogging protocols.

Tomorrow we drive up to Castle Point to stay in another wee house. But this one has no modern connections at all. So I will be gone for those two days. Then off to Wellington we go. But today is ALL Hawkes Bay.

I hope you have a lovely day too.

See you tomorrow!

Love celi