Fishing for Sun.

Its Labour Day weekend and we have been looking forward to some long awaited sunny spring weather. The forecast promised us good weather for the whole weekend but this Sunday morning we awoke to sheets of depressing grey cloud once again.

We have found that the weather in Wellington can be very fickle. If you travel as little as 10km north or south you can find that you can move from rain and drizzle to bright sunshine just by turning a corner. So with this in mind we decided to explore the Rimutaka Rail Trail. This was a railway line opened in 1878, running from the Hutt Valley north across the steep Rimutaka Mountain Range to Featherstone. It apparently used the same type of Steam Engine that is still used to climb up Snowdon in the UK so must have been an amazing rail trip. The track was closed in 1955 when the Rimutaka Rail Tunnel was opened.

There are stunning views around every corner.

It was a beautiful walk but next time we will be taking our mountain bikes and we will see if we can make it to the tunnel.

It was the other half's birthday earlier in the week and we decided to buy him a fishing rod. So this weekend we have been attempting to learn how to fish. Both of us are complete novices and so on Saturday we rather optimistically headed out to the Hutt River in an attempt to catch some fish. This led to about an hour of tangled lines, lost hooks and wading out into the river to collect stuck lines (and not a small amount of swearing) before we gave up and headed home. We then consulted some instructional videos on You Tube and the next day managed to cast off without getting completely tangled lines. We felt very proud! Give us a year or two of practice and we might actually manage to catch something.

The girls were more interested in paddling and throwing stones into the river than helping Dad fish. Their combined efforts are probably partly responsible for the fact that we failed to catch anything!

Messing about on the river!