A sojourn to the springs

I had a brief few days away in the South Island with fam, and thought about how many cool places there would be to live and write. Which is kind of daft, because it doesn't matter where you write, really, home is pretty good if you've got a quiet space. Or do you even need a quiet space if you put on headphones and listen to some non-distracting music? I'm pretty sure I don't.

Anyhoo, one place I did visit on the sojourn South was Hamner Springs, which is a town in North Canterbury in the South Island.

It's around a two hour drive north of Christchurch, and is a touristy-town set in hills, with views to snow-covered mountains, and it has... Hot pools!! It is famous for the hot pools. In fact, at one point the natural hot pools were used for therapeutic reasons, and while there may be some therapeutic claims, I can't say as I felt any different leaving the pools except still a bit damp, very happy I'd finally been, and thinking I would definitely go back again.

I didn't take too many photos because I didn't want to take photos of other people (or selfie myself for that matter.) I would not want people taking photos of me walking from pool to pool in my bathers, that's for sure, and there were people wherever you went, so I just managed a few lame shots. The shot to the right shows the snow capped mountains. Much better in real life. To be honest, you get more of an idea of what the place is by looking at the website here.

But we were there for a couple of hours and we just sat and enjoyed the varying degrees of heat in the pools. Because NZ is still closed to non-Kiwis, it is a good time for us to visit the country and do all those things which, when it all opens up again, will probably be packed.

I still think Hamner Springs would be a neat place to live for a while, especially over winter when the trees are bare, and there is snow up in them mountains, and how good is sitting outside on a chilly day, all wrapped up with a hot drink, just feeling the peace and the freedom? I think its pretty perfect.

Comments

Wet weather

It is starting to get cooler, praise be. There was a heap of rain one day this week, and by the time I got to work I was damp, to put it mildly. Soaked is overstating it but uncomfortably wet. Have you ever tried to dry off your trousers with a hair dryer? I would have been there forever! If only, I thought, I had a spare anything at work, like a skirt even, but no. Nothing to change into. There was only a pair of pantyhose in case I ripped them, although I had stuffed spare socks and boots in my bag so I could have dry feet at work. It is worth noting that the very next day I went to work, I had completely forgotten that thought about spare clothes altogether and did not take spare anything for future weather events. In fact, I only remembered as I was thinking about writing this blog post. Hopeless. Given I’m trying to keep up my walking part-way to work to get in a good 40 minutes/steps, I should take along spare clothes to keep in my locker just in case. It really was uncom...

My latest obsession

I have recently been a bit obsessed with the practice of junk journalling. Junk jouraling! I love it so far. Its been around a few years and seems to have taken over a bit from from the scrapbooking of yore, but the thing I like about it is you use up all your stuff that is lying around. You can use all your rubbishy bits and pieces of paper and things. I like the tutorials of a lady called Leah with a channel called Thrifty Day , and I've had a go at it and I kind of really like doing it. Sometimes I feel a bit out of sorts (I blame hormones... or perhaps it is, rather, the lack of them!) and so I decide to cut stuff up and stick it on a page and I feel better. Therapeutic! I also think that because it is play and there are no rules and you can be as messy as you like, and start again if the page looks like utter rubbish, well, it is just so good for you. It's like being a kid and let's face it... we got to do all the cool stuff when we were kids. Why not , now we're ...

An old post

This is a blog I wrote for a now defunct pop culture site I used to contribute to, some years ago. A friend was reading some fiction I’d written the other day and after telling me what she did like about it, commented, “But you’re no Jane Austen.” The only Jane Austen I have read is “ Emma .” and it was read under duress at university. I consider myself a person of not massively low intelligence, but it took three reads to get my head around it. Interestingly, that paper was not only my first and only complete Jane Austen experience, but my first and only experience of analysing English literature. I did get an A but not without suffering a degree of depression as a result. Yes, I gained an appreciation for some things (Elizabeth Barrett Browning sonnets, oh my gosh!) but analysing Emily Dickinson was enough to sap the will to live right out of me. Fortuitously, at the end of that semester, I saw the movie Stargate on TV, and promptly un-enrolled myself fr...

Jo's blog

Search This Blog