Forecast: Saturday decent, Sunday $#!+ – the classic weekend forecast for winter in Wellington

Saturday morning was off to a brilliant, but chilly start, 5 degrees, 8 am and down at Lower Hutt parkrun (for those not involved, parkrun is AMAZING and you should all give it a go, its a free, weekly walk/trot/wiggle/sprint/crawl for 5k and happens all over the world. At home, its at 9am up at Les Quennevais cycle track, all you need to do is register online, print off your barcode, ladies put on a sports bra – nobody wants to see jiggly jugs that early in the morning – and get moving. It’s not a race, nobody really cares how fast or slow you go, just go. Everyone is always really friendly and this week I met a couple from the UK who were travelling and had stopped in for the Lower Hutt run as they were in the area and a couple of really cute dogs (dogs are also allowed, on a short lead). I’m still trying to get James there, I thought the lure of cute dogs would be enough but apparently not!

I came 5th in my age group, 93rd overall with a time of 28 minutes – miles off my personal best but a personal best for my NZ runs, not bad considering it was so cold. 

Then it was a quick dash home, chuck the bikes in the van and head into the city to Makara Bike Park where James was meeting ‘the boys’ for a spin.

It was freezing. Like, proper freezing all the cars still had a thick layer of ice on them. Obviously, boys being boys were late and we hung around before they sped off into the frost and I pootled along on my own as my usual partner in crime was out of town this weekend.

Taking the steep shortcut I managed to beat the boys half way up the mountain, they went a different way and overtook me again. At this point my legs were jelly and I was quite ready to head back to the van and go to sleep, but i continued and only arrived at the top of the mountain a minute behind them!

James: you weren’t a minute it was more like 5… 

I cruised down my new favourite track here called ‘north face’ which is really rocky sort of flowing track and just awesome (until a land slip had washed a side of the trail away after a quick right hand corner) One trip to the top was enough for me and I was done! James cracked on with the boys and in total climbed 2600ft in a 15 mile ride – jeepers!

Needless to say the rest of the afternoon was spent on the sofa with James snoring his little head off and after a few games of uno and roast chicken for dinner we were in bed for 8.30pm!

 

(James thought he’d annoyed me with a +4, muhahahaha, but look what I picked up!) 

Sunday morning was delightfully sunny and I thought the forecast was wrong, but no, rain was still on its way 

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In classic James and Victoria style we dropped a pin in the map and decided to go there. This adventure, in the style of the guy from ‘the un-dateables’ we might go to Eastbourne 

Aaaaaaand just as we pulled up and we were pulling the bikes out the van, this happened… 

We decided that we didn’t want to ride that much so hid in the van for a bit until it slowed down. 

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I then went shell hunting and found possibly the biggest shells I’ve ever seen!

Thought these were whoppers then found this… it was huuuuuuuuuuge!

​obviously, an adventure wouldn’t be complete without a cuppa tea and toast made in the van and James playing on rocks with his bike 

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Followed by the ever so joyous trip to the laundrette, made better by Cadbury’s new creation, basically a giant caramac bar 

The chocolate fuelled adventure continues…