Backpaddock Lakes - Lakes at the Back of a Paddock #mindblown

Wind farm viewing platform, nailed it

The drive over I was worried Sinbad was going to be a problem but he did just fine. I stopped into a place called Palmerston North and got some stuff that the mechanic said would help Sinbad if he got sensitive again. It rained but I did have a couple of scenic stops, including a special viewing platform to see the wind turbines, first time for everything. Imagine if we had those in England. I arrived into Waipukurau and it was raining so I decided to stay in the campsite for the night and then call Trev (guy in charge of the lake) in the morning. The campsite was expensive for what they offered, had a chilled out evening and then the next day it was nice and sunny so called up Trev and he told me there was a guy called Tristan in the house at the top of the road who was in charge of the lake.

Beautiful

Tristan was pretty cool so we hung out then went down to check out the lake. It is man-made, took a long ass time to dig up and then filled from underground springs. There is one boat lake and another cable lake with two System 2 style cables (also homemade), an impressive feat in engineering. Tristan showed me how everything worked and then we went for a wakeboard. Then Trev and family came home and we hung out down by the lake, had a BBQ.

I then pulled Sinbad up by the lake and went to sleep, there was no light pollution so I could open the sunroof and looked up at the sky. It was the first time I had seen that many stars in the sky, it was beautiful.

The next few days were spent by the lake hanging out with Tristan in the sun. There were a number of awesome riders that would come down and ride. I landed my first Raley, technically what I did was called a Galey because I cheated and used the pull from the corner but it was awesome to be able to try new stuff. One day Tristan had a lesson with a young girl called Sam and her parents had just bought a Nautique G23, for the record it is like a tank. I was lucky enough to get a ride on it in exchange for taking some photos, good trade I think. It has a huge wake and even in this lake which is shallower it still kicks you up in the air. 

I took a lot of photos so you have to put up with clicking through them now…

The slalom course gets a lot of action

This is a G23 (or boat tank as it is commonly referred)

Marcus carving round a bouy

Sam wakesurfing behind the G23

Ollie, Eva and Trev playing on a "biscuit"

Hoochie Cole as he is known

Sam throwing a Raley

Tristan playing on his board

Tom proving that not all kneeboarding is stupid

I thought I should take a trip in Sinbad into town to make sure he was working, oh I’m glad I did, he got a little warm on that trip. Fortunately Trev is a mechanic so he took Sinbad with him to work and got one of the other guys to clean him up good. One evening Tristan and I decided that we wanted to go watch The Hobbit and what better place to watch it that where it was made. At the start of the movie there was an intro thanking New Zealand, it made me feel involved with the making of the movie. Unfortunately I am bad luck with cars and Tristan’s car might have exploded a little bit when we got to the movies. So Trev came out and literally swapped cars whilst we were watching the movie, haha. The Waipuk cinema is something a little different to any other cinema I’ve been to. It is like a school theatre with the wooden arms, it was an experience like no other. But a good one none the less. 

Shooting stuff

A couple of days before I left I helped Tristan with a Stag Do, they came down and did a lot of wakeboarding. We also had a clay pigeon shoot so got to fire some rounds into the lake, always a blast, see what I did there? After that the guys were going on a pub crawl with Tristan as their chauffeur, we had to pick Sinbad up from the garage first and then I joined in the excitement. Without going into too much detail there were some international drinking competitions and let’s just say that England came home with gold. You are welcome England!

An awesome place to spend a few days, thanks to the Rowlands for having me.

Woodie’s Wisdom: 5 nights sleeping by a lake does wonders for the soul.

Sinbad's Revenge - 24 Hours in Bulls

After leaving Wellington I was driving up the west side of the country, stopping off at a few beaches to take photos. There was even one beach that I went for a nice little wander along as well, splashing around in the shallows. I like to think of it as a romantic walk on the beach for one. I needed to pee so pulled over in a small town/backwards village called Bulls and as I stopped Sinbad snapped, crackled and popped. It sounded like the radiator was sizzling and when I opened the bonnet there was a lot of coolant and water dripping out of it.

It was a romantic session, any takers?

I put on my calmest face and went in to the information shop, these are called I-sites in New Zealand, very useful places and they know things. I was pointed in the direction of a garage and Sinbad made it there just about and dribbled out a bit just to show George that he was poorly. I was booked in for the morning so I had to find a place to sleep. Fortunately Bulls has it’s own campsite so I crawled down the road and as I coasted into the entrance Sinbad had another attempt at spitting up his guts. I booked in for the night and just left him at a random angle in the driveway. This was a perfect time to go get a well needed beer. Bulls has 2 pubs and I went into both of them, hoping to find a nice place for a drink. The first bar was filled with locals gambling away their money. I don’t want to speculate about what brought them there but I’m sure you can use your own experiences to imagine them. So I moved on down the road to the next bar, it served food! Well, I say food, they offered what appeared to be much so I politely turned that down and just had a beer. A nicer bar it was and the barman only had 3 fingers, like one of the Simpsons! New Zealand has provided me with 3 toes and 3 fingers, I’m impressed. Coincidentally there was some NFL on so I spent my afternoon watching that, I’m pretty sure it was a terrible game. I grabbed some grub from McDonalds, first time since Christchurch Airport all those weeks ago, and headed back to the campsite.

The Bulls campsite, as I’m sure you can guess, was heaving. There were 2 of us there, so we fell to talking. Now I think his name was Danjal, I asked twice and I thought it rude to ask for a spelling. Danjal is a bit of a legend, he lives in a bus that he has done up himself. Not the smartest of cribs but has a hot shower, stove, electricity, bed and TV; all you really need. I was invited in and given a glass of water, a fine host. Danjal is from just up the coast in Wanganui and was down working as a butcher. He has 2 kids who live with their mum in Australia. Danjal was also my first real experience of a Kiwi using “yeah nah” (it’s a popular phrase) and he used it all the time, every time it made me smile. If he had offered me some of his ghost chips I would have fallen out of my chair. He then offered to take me fishing in the river so we went on a little walk, it would appear walking was a new experience for Danjal but we made it. He showed me how to cast a line properly but after a good hour we hadn’t caught a thing so headed back for a good nights sleep.

Who puts an engine there?

After dropping Sinbad off with George the mechanic and sitting around for a while I headed off for some breakfast. I thought, I have some time to kill, might as well visit the Bulls museum. It can’t be that impressive I thought. Oh wow! I was greeted by Robin like a long lost relative, shaking my hand and welcoming me. My guess is that not many people stop by. He was also from England and came out to be closer to family and got involved with the museum and is now in charge. As he showed be around he gave me lots of bits of paper on the history of Bulls, always nice to have reading material. It would appear that even though it is now a small town, Bulls used to be kind of a big deal. If my memory recall is correct, it was a crossroads of New Zealand with a huge timber mill. And during the First World War, New Zealand sent a lot of horses to help the fight but only a few made it home, a very interesting story if you want to read it, I have a copy. One of the horses that returned was called Bess and she died just up the road so I decided that when Sinbad was ready that would be our test trip. Here is the link to the Bulls website, enjoy: http://unforgetabull.co.nz/

I finally got back to the garage and Sinbad was being put back together. Sinbad was made badly, who thinks that putting the engine under the seats is a good place? You need to take out both seats and peal everything off before you even find the engine. George said Sinbad should be fine, we took our

test journey out to see Bess’ grave. We got a little lost because distance on the map Robin gave me was about as accurate as an Alton Towers map! Unfortunately on one of my little stops I bent Sinbad’s key, I know he will have his vengeance, in this life or the next!

The grave of Bess the Horse

My original plan was to head up the West Coast but during my little break I received an email from a lake in Hawkes Bay who I’d contacted before I’d left saying I should pop in. I changed my plans and headed that way.

Woodie's Wisdom: That was a whole load of Bulls-hit

The doctor's surgery in Bulls #banter