Shaken not Stirred

Although I have felt very minor bumps from earthquakes before, I have just experienced first hand ,a pretty major one measuring 7.8 magnitude.

I was in Wellington, New Zealand when the earthquake struck just after midnight on Monday the 14th of November. The epicenter was at a town called Kaikoura northeast of Christchurch on the south Island.

This was pretty big and the largest in New Zealand for 10 years as I'm writing this the whole town is cut off from landslides and there is no water or sewage in the town with supplies of water etc being bought in by helicopter.

However what I wanted to touch on was my reaction to it which on reflection surprised me.

I was in bed and had been asleep for only about 20 minutes when it started so woke up very quickly it started with a bumping movement which intensified over a period o what seemed like about a minute.

As it intensified the chandelier on the ceiling started to sway  and move back and forth quite strongly and the whole house started to shake in addition there was a lot of noise that was getting louder and louder. It sounded like rocks grinding together but in reality was just the house straining and moving.

I knew straight away that it was an earthquake but during the whole time it was happening I just lay there on the bed watching it happen.

I never once thought about getting up or trying to take cover somewhere but was just thinking, so this is what an earthquake feels like

I'm still trying to puzzle out my reaction?

Back Home

Well this last few weeks have seen us doing an awful lot of travelling, Our daughter Anna, lives exactly half way round the world from us so visiting her is a major event. We started off with an 8 hour drive to the tunnel and stopped overnight in Folkstone before setting off from Heathrow, the first leg of the journey is (just) an 11hr flight to LA we spent some time in Santa Barbara before continuing our journey, another 13hr flight to Auckland a 2 hr wait and the an hour's flight to Wellington arriving refreshed (sic) at 8am in the morning, during which we passed the date-zone so lost a complete day!

We had a lovely time catching up with Anna, James and the 3 boys ( Joe,Leo and Blake ) while we were there we all hired a beach house a couple of hours drive north from Wellington.
The house backed right up to the sand dunes with a short walk to the sea......Lovely!

 A nice seat directly behind the house on the sand dunes overlooking the sea

 

Miles and miles of deserted wide clean beaches, the beach is actually designated as a road with a 30mph limit and many vehicles use it to tow boats or just to gain access.




There was a lovely decking area around the house and an outside Pizza oven with a good supply of wood which we made good use of. A nice place to spend a few hours each day with some cold beer and wine!

The time there went all to quickly and we were back on a plane or another 1 hr flight to Auckland another 3 hr wait and another 13 hr flight to Hong Kong, In actual fact we stayed this time the other side of the water in Kowloon for a couple of nights which made a nice break before yet another long flight 13hrs 40mins back to Heathrow!
All in all a lovely holiday and one to remember.

Back home now with all the spring and summer to look forward to. The garden is the first priority so I've spent a bit of time this week rotavating quite a reasonable sized area beside the fruit beds ready for vegetables.

From this end it looks quite a big area which in reality it is as against the area of grass I have cut down in readiness for turning over in the next few weeks but looking from the other end I wonder what I've taken on!

 I've also knocked up a compost area out of some of the trees I've been taking down so all in all I'm quite pleased with my work since we have got home

I am now also making the first tentative steps to forming quite a large decking and seating area at the rear of the house, this should make a very nice entertaining area and I would very much like to get it completed in March so that we have the full use of it during this coming Spring and Summer. 

Watch this space!