Bridges and Balloons: Nelson's column

I've been hanging around Nelson area for the past few weeks. It's a pretty lovely area - so much sunshine! And also the best curry I've ever had at Little India. Nelson itself is quite a nice town with a great market on Saturdays selling alsorts of arts and crafts and yummy chutneys. I spent a bit of time wwoofing with a family that has a 5ha farm just on the outskirts of the city, with 2 cows, 2 goats, heaps of hens, turkeys and ducks. It's great to see something like this working so close to the city (below is the view into town from the small vege garden) - though I think some of the neighbours think differently following the escape of the pigs, who are now wild...

Here's a funky little Chinese Silky Bantum hen. Useless for anything except looking kind of funky -

I've been doing alsorts of work here - It's been great to have a variety of stuff to do, and I've picked up lots of little bits of info on the way. I've been clipping wings, potting on PawPaws (amazing that they grow here!), feeding flax to the cows (a good natural antibiotic type thing for their digestive system aparently), some seed saving -

And plenty of opportunities to explore the are. Here's Cable Bay (not much like the Colonsay version... named because a telecommunications cable between North and South Island was buried here), just North of Nelson...

where I saw the loneliest cow in the world -

I also went on a mini 3 day adventure into the Kahurangi National Park, which was brilliant. The walk started at the Flora carpark, which kindly starts you off at nearly 1000m above sea level (although poor old Pat didn't quite manage it all the way, getting quite overheated and steamy (oh er!) at about 750m, where I decided to leave it and hike up the rest of the track). I then trundled along an old path along the valley passing some great old shelters and relics of the gold mining in the area. Here's GridIron Gulch, which used to be a village about 100 years ago or so -

... and is host to some brilliant shelters. This one is just a wee platform under a giant rock, with a nice little fire pit down below (sorry the picture isn't very sharp, but you get the idea...) -

The tramp carried on up through the valley until I eventually arrived at the Salisbury Lodge, a very well equiped hut with awesome views, just in time for sunset -

The next morning was brought in by some beautiful mist -

and I decided to do a walk up to Lake Peel and back -

This is the view on the way back looking over the Tablelands (the plateau) towards Mt Arthure (which is just in cloud) and Gordon's Pyramid (the smaller peak in the centre of the picture), and right over the bay to Nelson in the far distance (left of the picture) -

Then the final day was back to the flora car park via Gordon's Pyramid and Mt Arthur (flora is nestled just in between the two small peaks in the far left of the picture). This was a bit of a slog, but worth it for the fantastic views, although cloud again at the top of Mt Arthur. Typical! Here's some more morning mist from Gordon's Pyramid looking over to The Twins (centre frame) and further into the Kahurangi -

For Easter weekend the walk was pretty quiet suprisingly. And the weather was fine, although definitely getting colder with hats and thermals needed at night. Brrrr! Making me think of British Spring and daffodils!

And a wee bit of walking around Abel Tasman on a wet day - but the weather served it quite well. Some dark and pretty tree ferns soaking up the rain -