TeamCannonball

Well I have been back a few weeks and I am slightly bored, Chris is also slightly bored and even Rob up in his new factory appears to have itchy (and smelly) feet. We started big and discussed taking Bedford army trucks to NZ, then we thought about getting to the moon using an old washing line and some magnesium shavings. Then reality snuck in and punched us in the face, so whilst a massive if trip is still on the cards we are aiming for another road trip in to Europe sometime in Feb or March.

The aim is simple, collect passport stamps and find a bar in Prague where there is girl Rob thinks Chris will fancy and we get free beer. We also want to visit this place:

No reason of course

Its the usual sort of plan so expect stickers and we will drive east as fast as we can. If all goes to well we will hopefully drop in to Romania before looping back through Poland and back. We will sleep rough and live like animals for a week before coming home.

Sold

It doesn’t take long for me to become bored, infact as soon as I was back from NZ we planned to go back to the Ring with 3 cars. It caught me by complete suprise that the plan almost failed and with 48 hours to go were reduced to one working car, and it only had two seats

My GTI was dead after its gearbox imploded and so was Dez’s E30 Tourer which decided that it would eat its engine. Never ones to let minor problems such as not having a car stop us we both went out to buy new ones. The critera was simple, cheap and nearby.

The new line up was another E30 Tourer for Dez (his 5th maybe?!), an MR2 for myself and Alex’s MX5 with its shiny new roll bar.

The trip was another lucky success with Alex setting a blisteringly quick time and showing that lightness and handling can easily outshine shear power, although I think he wants power as well as he can now be found muttering to himself about turbos and superchargers. I had a rather large spin as I discovered the fact that the mk2 rev1 MR2 (honestly thats what its called) is as mad as a badger and no where near as forgiving as my GTI, luckily I didn’t hit anything. I haven’t had a call as close as that since having a piss in a mine field! We all span and we all had fun, with another cheap and fun night in a German bar winding Rash up.

The next trip will be in the new year when the weather clears up. The tourer and MR2 should be sporting new suspension, tyres and uprated brakes and if Alex gets his way he may have a nucleur powerstation in his engine bay.

Photos can be found here.

A few new photos can be found here.

90 Mile beach is fairly typical of attractions in NZ, it is 55 miles long in reality! It is open to traffic but excluded from most rental agreements, ours included. This of course meant that I went on it anyway and discovered that our van is:
a.)Rear wheel drive
b.)Crap at doing doughnuts and “power” slides

We stopped in at the beach a few times as we went up the main road to Regina and its a wide bleak beach when the weather is poor. I am sure its better in the sunshine!

We were aiming for Regina to see the divide between the Tasman and Pacific which Rich says is worth seeing and to enjoy the remote scenes at the most Northern point of NZ. Sadly the weather was rubbish and we found not peace and quiet but a building site! Oh well, we have been lucky most of the time.

We had a bit of shock yesterday morning when I discovered that the van was due back in Auckland at 2pm today. Whoops!! We are now in Auckland in a hostel and the van is gone. A couple of days here then its back to the UK.

Over the last couple of days we have gone around the Coromandel Peninsula and been lucky with the weather. Most of the locals we met said its been terrible recently! We stopped in at the Hot Springs on a beach which are very cool. Just at the top of the beach you suddenly find very hot sand and if you dig a hole it fills with very hot water from a natual hot spring deep below. The sea then washes up around your little hole. Its the first Hot Spring I have come across which is anywhere near as interesting to as the Roman Bath set up in Bath. Tom also insisted on wearing his boots and jeans and got wet trying to cross a stream that cut across the beach!

We also called in at Catherdral Cove and after a time bending walk explored the cove and the huge arch that has formed due to the various rates of erosion. More photos of where I have been can be found here

We are now just north of Auckland on the coast, not long to go now until I have to come back! I also heard from a friend who is in the Escape Hostel in Queenstown that we lived in for a while and apparently its now been closed. They were all turfed out on 24 hrs notice which was a bit harsh. I don’t feel so bad about the kitchen cupboard door I pinched to prop up my bed now!”

You can all stop worrying, I am still alive. I have however been to cheap to pay for wireless internet at camp sites!! I should probably you in on what happened to the car. It didn’t end quite as I hoped really, on the last trip in it I got pulled over for speeding (I think thats happened in every country I have ever driven in). Thats not the bad news though. The bad news is that the car decided that it had had enough and expired in an enormous plume of dense brown/white smoke as it was driven round to be bid on at the auction. Oddly no one bothered to bid which was a shame really. We managed to get rid of it privately but for essentially nothing at all. It did it’s job though and we’re now in a camper van.

Calling it a camper van is over egging it as its actually an old Toyota Hi Ace van with a large amount of spray paint on the sides and a sleeping area in the back. Its does the job well though! Campsites are cheap and plentiful and we don’t have to drag all our of kit around hostels with us.

We crossed at night from Picton and spent the next day exploring Wellington in the sunshine. Its a nice city with most of its housing and suburbs spread across the surrounding hills. We found it’s Wind Turbine which was an experiment a few years ago, since its the only one I can only assume they thought it was not for them! The view from the Wind Turbine was good though and worth the time we spent driving around trying to navigate the maze of hills to find it!

Since then we have been to New Plymouth which was much like Old Plymouth, so much so that I can’t really remember much about it. Rotorura was our main stop on the Thermal Highway across the North Island so far. Its an odd place next to a huge lake that stinks of Sulpher all the time due to the heavy geo thermal activity in the area. We spent the day at Wai O Tapu taking in the Geyser which was set off using soap and looked like a prop from Blue Peter and the various pools of steaming mud and strange smells.

Today we have been exploring the Bay of Plenty, home to sandy beaches and a lot of sun shine in the winter! We’re in Cambridge and are popping in to Hamilton tomorrow so that Tom can take photos of Richard O’Brians statue which is there. Each to their own I suppose. Then back to the Bay of Plenty and north.

More photos are up and can be found here.

I am now back in Christchurch in the old prision, its a very cool hostel!! We have had an entertaining trip from Wanaka where we had heavy snow (see the new photos for the road conditions) as we made our way to Methan to ski at Mount Hutt. We took a diversion and drove to Mount Cook which is a small village at the base of the mountains, it wasn’t that great so we headed down a gravel track for another 15km and found ourselves on a glacier that was mostly covered in rubble looking up at Mount Cook and its surrounding peaks. It was worth the detour to see it.

Mount Hutt had the best snow we have seen so far although we couldn’t get up the mountain as the road had closed due to heavy snow! This is a common problem for New Zealand, they expect snow so much that they create ski fields but then everytime is snows they get caught out! The powder was fantastic and the views exceptional, the quality of the powder means that I now want to get some new skis

It was then back to Christchurch for a night before we decided to spend a day popping over to the west coast. Arthurs pass was closed due to heavy snow so we took the Lewis pass and quickly found ourselves ploughing through heavy snow, it was slow progress and when we eventually got to the other side we realised there was not much to see so spent the night on a small town. That lead to this morning which was a bit of a problem really, we tried the Lewis pass road out of the town and found it closed due to even more snow so we tried the other road and that was closed to this left us with one more road which lead to Nelson at the very top of the island from which we could drive down the east coast road. This would be a long haul, which was made longer when we found that road was closed aswell but might open at 1pm. We queued up and watched some House on the laptop, I also had the genius idea of how to heat up some cold pies we had bought, I stuck them in the engine bay for a while!

The road opened at 1pm after a 2 hr wait and we arrived in Christchurch at 8pm having driven solidly. The big plus is I think we have now driven on every major road the South Island has to offer and the scenary was wonderful. The current plan is to auction the car on the 19th and we have rented a camper which is infact a small van with some bedding and a gas stove to take to the north island.

Fingers crossed some idiot buys our car!!

New photos are here.

I tried boarding again at Coronet and found boarding to be fun but the board I had this time was different and I didn’t manage toe edge very well at all! I think I will try at the Snow Dome in Milton Keynes when I get back.

We had an excellent last day at the Remarkables playing all over the place and I even managed to ‘ride’ a few items in the stash but at least one was when I accidently ended up on it! Photos can be found here.

Today we have been to Treble cone which is near Wanaka with Rich and Nick to experience the best ski field in NZ and it was instantly obvious that it was a lot better than Coronet!! Since we were going to Wanaka Tom and I have decided that we would leave Queenstown a day early so we were up at 6am to pack the car. The day was excellent with great weather and some decent snow on the mountain. The biggest difference I found was that the runs were a reasonable length so you can pick up speed a bit. Photos can be found here from today.

We’re now in Wanaka again and will come up with our next plan tomorrow! The only place we need to be is Christchurch on the 20th to meet Becky. The hostel we’re in tonight has proper beds wich is nice after our time in Escape, but I did end up enjoying myself there since I got to know some good people. I will definitly miss Fergburger, its ideal for those who hate preparing food at the best of time!

Andy

I have finally given snow boarding a go, but don’t tell my physio as she will be very cross with me. I hired a board and decided that lessons were a bit expensive so it was off to the Remarkables to ‘learn by doing’. We started on the baby slope and I quickly found that I could stand, balance and use my heel edge and go quickly in a straight line and ride switch with an 80% chance of stopping before hitting what ever was in my way. Toe Edge was a different story however and I failed to get that right which was annoying!

After and hour I was also bored of the baby slope so jumped on the real lift and went up. Of course you have wear the board on one foot and as those who have skied before will know, lots of boarders fall over at the top. I didn’t though!! I have no idea how I didn’t but it was all fine.

The main slope was fun and I only tumbled over when trying to turn on my toe edge at speed so I thought I would keep trying and did a few of the main runs and was not that slow or that bad until I came flying through a narrow space and found some damn fools who were Nordic skiing, or walking across a piste. I managed to avoid them but was now going very quickly and went over…. I landed on my arms and bumped my head. I am still hurting and it was 3 days ago now! I will be going for another try at boarding this week armed with advise from some boarders I am living with.

Queenstown is still really good fun and it will be a shame to leave next week.

Andy

Today was a good day as we had a plan. A good plan which we came up with at 1am in the Casino bar when Nick announced that his mate working on the Mountain let him know it was actually snowing. The plan was fairly straight forward, get up early and go up the Remarks. We even planned to give Rich and early morning call!!

Of course we failed, miserably in this plan. I expect this was because we came up with our plan at 1 am in a bar. It was still a great day though. When we eventually made it up the mountain at midday it was fairly quiet as the cloud cover on the road was heavy and it was quite a tricky drive which puts people off. I was very happy to find that there was actually some snow!! I then went for a little hike up a mountain with Rich and some of his mates to find some fresh snow, it was excellent fun! Looks like there is more to do up there aswell so another trip is needed and some more hiking although its bloody tiring to lug skis up a mountain through snow.

Also the Stash has finally opened, its a park made by Burton to show case their pro riders. They also open it up for normal people which is nice so we can go through and look at all the enormous jumps, rails and odd looking things that have been built. I have shamelessly stolen the photo below…

The Stash is fun and even at our varying levels there were things to ride. Hopefully the snow will stay put and I’ll go back tomorrow with some freshly waxed skis and have another play.