Spring-ing into action!

Many thanks to all the wonderful people who made such an effort to make our trip to the UK so fun! We still feel bad for not being able to see everybody, we'll just have to save up and come back again soon!

Since returning to the land of the long white cloud we have been spoilt by some great weather, enabling us to get out adventuring again. We had both thought that we were returning to school (12 hours after getting home!) to a quiet last term before the summer holiday, but we have both been run ragged for the past month. Bernie is seemingly organising the various prize giving ceremonies single-handed, and I have been chasing and hassling students endlessly for coursework deadlines and revision papers.

We were fortunate enough to have a long weekend and headed to the remote Marlborough Sounds for kayaking, camping and fishing in the wilderness. It was a great trip as always, we saw only two other kayakers in the 4 days we were out on the water (Friday afternoon until Mon evening).

Every time we head to the Sounds, I get thoughts of retiring there with a tinny (fishing boat) and enough land to play around with... not that I'm wishing my life away yet!

Back in Moncao (below), I caught heaps of Kahawai - nice fish that like a fight! I made Kahawai cakes and a fish curry which kept us fed for a week!

We have also been back into training. Berns is suffering from a real bugger of an ear infection - a result of swimming in pools for months sadly - I'm really enjoying my morning pool sessions though. 5:30am starts are much easier now it is light in the morning.

We have both been cycling a lot as we have a 160km (100 mile) bike race on Saturday - neither of us has been over 100km in a day but it should be a fab race - through a gorge from source to sea... running is not a hot point, but will be a priority for me after this week's bike race. We have some local triathlons beginning in a couple of weeks and then there are a few national races that I hope to compete in after new year's - the World Champs was an expensive experience, but I'd love to do it again...

Apart from that, we are enjoying our house and garden, the chooks are still laying well and I'm off kayaking for 3 days at a time over the next 3 weeks with school - being paid to go kayaking with seals, dolphins and golden beaches is something I'm getting used to!

Love to one and all,

C&B!