Category Archives: Activity

Activities Group

Chemin du Puy – Day 3 – up, up and a rain

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Monistroll d’Allier to Saugues

After the downhill of yesterday it is going to be up, up, up today.

But first of all it is bon chemin to Susan, Lynda and Jennifer. They are walking 26km today and decided to leave before breakfast, in the rain, to try and keep ahead of the predicted thunderstorms.

At breakfast we informed our host of their early departure. He gave a shrug and burst into song, “I’m singing in the rain, just singing in the rain”, with his French accent.

Other walkers had pre-warned us of the steep and difficult start to today’s walk. This however wasn’t as hard as expected.

The walk was pleasant with a couple of light showers before we arrived at Saugues, which was a welcome relief as thunder storms had been forecast.

Unfortunately the tracking app appears to have failed today. Perhaps I should have 2 apps recording our route.

Chemin du Puy – Day 2 – down, down, down.

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Montbonnet to Monistroll d’Allier

Today is the day of downs, not our mood but our elevation.

Our maximum elevation was 1200mtr our minimum 600mtr our elevation loss was 816 mtrs.

Not sure about tomorrow as we have been told it is up, up, up.

Walkabout day 2

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Day one didn’t end too well, Jo walked down the 3 steps in the flat, unfortunately there were 4. Ankle twisted and sore she had a restless night. (That may have been due to my snoring.)

Low cloud for the start of the day, hopefully it will clear later.

Today we decided to have easy strolls around town. I strolled and Jo limped.

Walkabout in Le Puy

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Finally made it to Le Puy….

Before picking the sisters up we had to get out of St Etienne after many u-turns and 25 minutes we were back at the hotel.

Off we go take 2 was more successful and we managed to find our other passengers with the help of the onboard navigation.

Arrived at Hertz at 12.15 to find it closed for lunch, back at 2.00.

Left the car behind and found our accomodation, then back to return the vehicle.

After returning we went walk about for the afternoon. Getting our passport and climbing the virgin Mary.

Chemin du Puy – Getting ready

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A little over three weeks to go before we start our walk and it’s about time I started to get ready for this walk.

Well my pack has been nearly packed for a month now, waiting for me to start training. As we will be walking 800 kms with our packs perhaps I should have started a few months ago. But like everything else there is always tomorrow.

I have setup my blogs for while we are away, all I’ll have to do is remember to start & stop the tracking app on my phone each day and then upload the file. I may even add a few words and some photos. 

It’s been raining most of today, so now would have been a good day to try the wet weather gear. Well there’s always tomorrow.

Rainbow Waterfall

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This is one of the training walks o and I undertook while house sitting in Kerikeri. Not only was it a training exercise for walking but also an exercise for mapping the route, recording way points and setting up a procedure for uploading this blog with the tracks and photos taken on the walk.

Hopefully all will work out OK while we are in France, if not I will end up with a lot of posts with blank maps.

Kerikeri waterfall walk

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We are currently house sitting i Kerikeri, not our Buddy house, this is looking after 2 cats.

As the weather is fine and we are supposed to be in training for our walk in France, which is niw only a month away, we decided to go visit a waterfall.

As we started off I set my phone to track us. I have just downloaded a new app as trackmytrip had stopped working.

Off we went with our loaded backpacks, well this is s training walk. The house is just over 500 mtrs from the main road a pleasant road walk to stsrt off. Then there is the 2 km of msin road. Although not as busy as roads in the UK there is a constant flow of traffic. Having walked into town there is another km of road walking before we find the track. (Good job I had looked it up before leaving).

That is one thing missing in most towns good signage for walkers.

The start of the track is along a grassed area, with a stream on one side of us and a walled off housing development on the other. Just after the stream does a u-turn and we round the corner, a track leads off down the hill and into the bush. After about 20 mins. walking we finally get to the waterfall.

As we haven’t walked far enough yet we decide to carry on walking to the old stone house. So we meandered through the bush alongside the river.

Until we reached our destination. Well our halfway point really as we had to turn round and walk back.

After a quick stop and a sandwich we were on our way again, retracing our steps back to Kerikeri.

 

Waikato River Walk

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Out for a river walk to start training for the Le Puy camino in June. Full back pack, well nearly full, haven’t got Jo’s overflow yet.

Also saw these guys floating down the river in style trying to make their way to Auckland…

 

Buddy Walk

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We are house sitting in Keri Keri again and although this is  only a short walk for us, after Buddy has chased after his ball up and down the beach several times, he ends up walking over 3 times as far as us.

This walk is a pleaseant stroll over the rocks to a beach and then onto more rocks and the headland to the north of the bay.

 

Fishing

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It’s the last day at Keri Keri and we are sat out in the bay fishing from our kayak. The weather is cool but calm, although a storm is forecast for tomorrow.

We’re just bobbing along drifting slowly with the tide, or perhaps the light breeze is pushing us slightly. Having been in this spot for a couple of minutes without a single bite Jo decides it’s time to move.

She paddles a short distance towards a yellow marker buoy, where last year we caught a couple of decent sized snapper, well decent for us is just over the legal size.

As soon as the lines are in and Jo gets a few nibbles, then all is quiet again. She brings in her line only to find the bait has gone. I do the honours and fix some more squid to her line. Looks like we’ll be feeding the fish again today.

Down goes her line, nibble nibble again. She starts to reel in. ‘I think I’ve got this one’

Then it’s nibble nibble on my line. Shall I try to catch this brat or get ready to help Jo?

‘I think this one’s a decent size can you get the net ready’

I carefully place my rod across my lap, pleading for my fish to take my bait and wait until I’ve sorted Jo’s out.

Jo’s nearly reeled her line in. I place the landing net in the water ready.

‘Holy shit!’ Jo screams as she throws her fishing tackle into the sea and grabbing her paddle in one blurred movement.

‘Christ’ did I just imagine that or did Jaws just swim under us. It’s bright eye stared at me, just before it turned away from my pathetically small landing net, it’s body as round as our kayak.

By the time I realised what had happened Jo was screaming. ‘Get paddling, we’re not staying here.’ Her arms paddling frantically like one of those toy wind up swimmers you played with in your bath as a child.