Wednesday 9th March 1030pm
Today has been a much needed rest day in Upper Hutt, Wellington with Richard and Clare and their three young sons Jack aged 6, Ollie aged 4 and Tom aged 2. Three little whirling durbishes!
I arrived swearing never to cycle again such was the pain in my left achilles and the situation still hasn’t changed drastically. I have struggled to walk today and my sight- seeing tour kindly lead by Richard has been mainly by car.
I had a lovely long lie in this morning and woke to a cooked breakfast which was inhaled in record time. I have built up quite an appetite in the last few days after my body has finally recognised that I will be exerting myself more or less every day from now on and needs the fuel. I haven’t really gone on about calorie intake much for fear of being boring but my fancy cycle computer kindly donated by POLAR ( thanks Lynne) tells me I am consuming around 800 cals an hour on the bike which means on average my body needs around 5600 extra calories if I cycle for 7 hours. I really struggle to eat that much so have lost around 8lbs so far. I’m hoping my beer intake will make up the difference though as I have no problems drinking.
Today Richard and I went into Wellington as I mentioned earlier and he showed me the Parliament building, and many of the other significant landmarks. One thing that is very apparent here is pride they take in the city. It is very relaxed, clean and manicured with well defined areas of use. The city itself has a Central Government area, a Retail area, an Industrial Sector and a Party area where all the bars are. It looks like a great city for socialising and everywhere you look you see the mountains behind with an abundance of trees making you feel that you are in a small industrious oasis carved out of a giant forested mountain range. Everywhere you look you see places that you would love to own a house because the views from the hillsides are spectacular. We drove up to Mount Victoria which overlooks the city and has a great viewpoint that takes in not just the city but the surrounding suburbs, airport and marina’s. I just clicked away with my camera like a Japanese Tourist as every view was amazing. It helped that today has been a beautiful day but all the same, this is a place I could live as it is relatively compact, exceptionally well laid out and attractive and many of the houses are individually designed, inventive and have plenty of space. It feels like one big friendly village.
We toured a couple of suburbs around Upper Hutt to see land plots and building sites and I was gobsmacked by the value for money you get here. For the price of my 2 bed city centre pad I could buy a 4 dbl bedroomed 250 sq meter luxury house with a dbl garage and half an acre of land on a hillside overlooking a fantastic view. Wellington really is a fabulous place to live, full stop! I’ve no plans to move here though so don’t get your hopes up !
Finally today I managed to get to see another Physio who no sooner looked at me she stuck a bunch of acupuncture needles in my legs. I also had some ultra sound on the offending achilles and was diagnosed with Achilles Tendonitis, which I knew already thanks to the internet. It was no surprise when she strapped my ankle up and told me to give up on my cycling trip and lay off exercise for at least two weeks. Yeah Right ! I said.
I now find myself with a dilemma as I don’t want to do myself irreparable damage and I don’t want to fail in my endeavour. I have decided for the moment to take another rest day tomorrow and have re-jigged my route so it’s a little shorter and less mountainous. This way it should be easier on the ankles and I have slightly longer to repair. I’m not entirely sure my ankle will be ok as the pain was unbearable yesterday but I am determined to give it my best shot. Richard and Claire have been great and are looking after me. In return I read stories to the boys and act as their punch-bag. It’s a fair deal I guess.
I guess in the meantime I can write more dross for you to read with your morning coffee and upload some more boring pictures of roads. Enjoy!
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