The tortuous Northland forests
The taxi dropped us off on a back road and we had an easy walk along dirt roads through more perfect farmland to Takahue. Daniel had control of the phone so we have a lot of photos of cows and not much else. 15kms later we got the the campsite – a patch of...
Ahipara to Kaitaia
After days of the beach we were looking forward to an easy day – 14kms along roads to Kaitaia. We walked through more of the best farmland ever, all rolling hills covered in lush vegetation. We left about the same time as two young guys and kept them in sight...
Starting the Te Araroa – Cape Reinga to Ahipara
We didn’t get off to a great start. We got dropped off at Cape Reinga at about 6pm. It was foggy and windy and horrible. We still hadn’t packed our bags with our food and hadn’t slept for 36 hours, and had 12.5kms to walk before we could set up our...Te Araroa here we come!
We’re on our way to do the Te Araroa, a 3000km tramp down the length of New Zealand. With five kids. And, as usual, we’re under-prepared. That’s why it’s called Messy...
Montegrazie, an Italian hill town
After leaving Lucca and parkrun, we headed north-west toward the French border. We were looking forward to some peace and quiet in the countryside, but we had to go through a final city ordeal before we reached it. Namely, getting lost in Genoa on the way. Shaz, the...
Exploring Lucca (including Lucca parkrun)
After getting off the ferry in Ancona, we headed to Lucca. Why Lucca? Because they have parkrun, of course! And after being in non-parkrun countries for months we were determined to get back to it. We didn’t really know much more about the area, and we were...
A day out in Pisa
We weren’t going to go to Pisa. We thought it would fit into the category of ‘horrendously tacky over-touristy chaos’ and the children protested that gross mistakes in engineering shouldn’t be a tourist attraction, but we were only 19kms away...