Another day in paradise!

Our weekly Thursday night sea swim race is always a refreshing highlight of the week. Numbers of participants have been rising steadily and we were all treated to a small pod of Orcas which used our swim course as a feeding ground before, during and after the race! There were 5 or 6 of them and some people were fortunate enough to see them eating sting ray's - their staple diet in these waters. A calf was also very visible and speaks well of the health of the group. A lot of swimmers were a bit nervous to swim with the huge dolphins, but there is no recorded event of an Orca attacking a swimmer so we all persevered - looking extra hard as an underwater 'fly-by' would have been great!

A friend of ours was paddling in a canoe and was treated to a broadside little more than a metre from her boat! We have heard of many sightings of this pod - resident to the area, but this was the first time we've been fortunate enough to see them. Click here for the newspaper story.

Talking of newspapers, I had a letter to the editor printed in the Nelson Mail! I am dabbling with local politics(!) by putting pressure on our mayor who is trying to push through permission to build a new road through our local community. We live in the most multicultural part of Nelson (a far cry from the diversity in the UK though!) and a lot of work has been done to improve what used to be a run-down area with few public facilities and no sense of community. Many of us locals are upset that the mayor wants a fast road through the middle of our park, shops and community centre, which regularly hosts festivals, a market and community events. This road has been argued over for decades apparently, but this mayor is fighting hard.

We had swim sports day at school yesterday. This involved competition races as well as fun races such a the dry teacher carry, which is pretty self-explanatory! I got involved a bit more and had a good rivalry with a senior student who competes at national level in the pool... I let him win honest!

Bernie and I bottled up 25 litres of lager last night and put a new brew of dark ale in the barrel. We are having a heatwave at the moment with temperatures in the 30's over the past few days, which means that the brew ferments in 4 days instead of 7-10 days like it did in the UK!

Bernie is in town having coffee (decaf!) with a friend and we're going to head up a local river for a swim soon to cool off! Bernie is finding this heat quite uncomfortable, but is handling it really well. Only 75 days to due date!

Love and best wishes from sunny Nelson! x x