Today I’m excited to be hosting a post from a friend and fellow blogger – Monica Shaw. I met Monica when she stayed with us at the small campsite I run here in France, and she offered to write a post about her trip down to Spain, which seemed like a lovely idea. I’m hoping to convince her to send over some more posts for you guys to enjoy. You can find out a bit more about … [Read more...]
Hiking Cape Raoul, Tasmania
The first big view of the walk out to Cape Raoul, Tasmania. One of my favourite walks in Tasmania was the five hour return hike out to Cape Raoul, on the Tasman Peninsula. This is a hike that takes you though native bush and out to cliff tops with quite frankly terrifying drops. There’s little in the way (ok, nothing in the way) of safety barriers, other than a very … [Read more...]
The Best Day Hikes in New Zealand
After a year in Australia, I summarised my three favourite day hikes in that wondrous country. It seems only fair therefore to give New Zealand a similar treatment, particularly since hiking (or tramping, as it is known locally), is a major highlight of any visit to New Zealand. All the hikes in this section are possible in a day for a reasonably fit person. If you’re … [Read more...]
Climbing Mount Taranaki in photos
Mount Taranaki is the second highest mountain on New Zealand’s north island, at 2517m (around 8500ft for you folks on the imperial system). The climb up it is a gruelling 17km hike, and this is generally regarded as being one of the toughest day hikes you can do on the north island. With this knowledge in our minds, we decided to give it a go. The day we chose was … [Read more...]
More lakes and mountains in Tongariro
Our time in the Tongariro National Park – the spectacular dual world heritage site on New Zealand’s North Island – is dwindling to an end. The four months we’ve spent here have been fabulous, and now that the end is in sight, with a new adventure on the way (more on that in a later post), we’re doing our best to finish seeing all of the sights in … [Read more...]
Day hikes: what you need to know
Living in the shadow of one of New Zealand’s top day hikes means I get regularly asked about what sort of preparation folks need to do in order to have a comfortable and safe walk. It’s a subject that’s close to my heart, having done a fair amount of walking, particularly during my time in Australia, where the heat can make for a challenging experience. I … [Read more...]
The Pillars of Hercules
The Tongariro National Park and it’s surroundings, I am starting to realise, are a little bit like Venice. Full of canals and gondolas. No wait. Well, actually there are some canals, but that’s not my point. My point is that the main parts of it, and in particular the Alpine Crossing, are incredibly full of people, whereas if you step away from the main avenues and … [Read more...]
Taranaki Falls
The Tongariro National Park, which I am living beside, is largely famous (and a dual World Heritage site) because of the three rather awesome giant mountains that sit within it. But an 80,000 hectare park is always going to have more to offer than “just” three towering mountains. And so we went for a walk from the confusingly pronounced Whakapapa (faka-papa) village, to the … [Read more...]