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ROUND THE BAYS - WE DID IT!!!!!

You know when you get roped into something that you never intend doing......well....

we agreed about 3 months ago to take part in the annual charity run. Its called 'Round the Bays' and its an 8km run from the City Centre to St Heliers.

We did intend doind loads of training but in the end the most we did was walk to the pub and hell did we pay for it!!

In the end - we had a great day - we ran all the way (apart from a very brief comfort stop behind some trees) and we did it in 55 mins!! You can check our time on http://www.roundthebays.co.nz/ You have to deduct 10 mins as this is the time we had the queue to get to the start line - there were 75,000 people taking part!!





This is the lovely Helen Clarke cheering us on as we passed the strat line - for those of you not in the know - she's our Prime Minister (could you imagine Blair or Thaggie doing this!!)










Hell Fire!!! Are we still alive?:?:?:?:? Here is both of us just after we passed the finish line - 2 seconds later we were on the ground awaiting the ambulances!!!

And this is our team - we were running on behalf of Lock Finance (Neil's Work) who made a donation to charity for every one of us who ran. They put on a BBQ for us after which was really good fun.

In the afternnon - we collapsed in the spa at home - thank God for the SPA!!!!

Rangitoto Island

We decided to go off for the day and explore one of the islands in the harbour - there are loads. There is an hourly ferry to Rangitoto so we decided to do the tourist thing.

Rangi is a volcano that emerged out of the sea about 600 years ago - its the newest of the islands in the harbour. Amazingly, all the lava is still there and you can see the lava flows that came from the crater.

On the way there before we got on the ferry - we got some fish n chips and can you believe... they served it in newspaper - wonderful!!! It was so good to have a poke of chips (the Scots will know what we mean)!!














Here are some of the lava flows. we took a ride in a tractor drawn carraige up to the top
Can you believe the houses are actually built on lava rock! There are very few houses here as the govt wanted to keep this as a reserve but there are still a few left





Here is a picture of the crater - its HUGE!!

AK07

As with every major city there is an annual festival. The AKL festival was called the festival of light and opened with a huge fire display on the domain. It was a mixture of fire & fireworks. And yes - you got it - we all had a picnic before it started - just so civilised darlings!!

The fire show was done by the same people who did the Olympic Games and Eiffel Tower

These guys came running down the hill out of the woods with fire bombs attached to their backs - they did a dance with all these rockets shooting out of their packs - we've never seen anything like this ever before.

SYMPHONY IN THE PARK

Each year Auckland City puts on a huge charity concert in Auckland Domain (the central park)

This was such a pleasant evening out - there was thousands people there all having a really great time. Everyone had a blanket/camping chair, picnic, bottle of wine, cheese board etc. It was so relaxed and the music and venue was all fantastic - they even played Land of Hope and Glory!!

There was the option to get up and waltz to some of the orchestral pieces which a lot of people did.

What was so nice about it was that it was so relaxed and everyone treatedthe event and venue with total respect - it was so enjoyable. AKL city even laid on buses to get people to from the event!

Here are some pictures of the night:


Ian and Chris - these are the guys that we visited in Napier - they have since moved to AKL

Dave and Rachel - great mates

This is the laser show at the end - we couldn't believe how fantastic it was!!