St Andrew’s Church, Cambridge then off to Taupo

This Tui is a nectar feeding bird and loves the yellow Kowhoi blossom. I have painted this for my 2012 calendar and it’s good to see it in real life in Kay’s garden.

Breakfast at 8.30am. Then Chris took me to St Andrew’s which was a delightful white wooden church typical of the style in each small town in this part of New Zealand at least and very similar to ones I’d seen in New England. It had a plaque bearing the year in which it was built – 1881.

I eventually found Mark taking choir practice in the church room and waited patiently but as time went on it became clear that there was to be no ringing. I eventually met up with Mark who said that there was some problem with the bells but he would happily show them to me after the service. I still believed at this point that the bells were only hung for chiming although Kay was convinced they were rung properly every Sunday.

The service was a slightly different arrangement from what I was used to and it was also in Maori in the service book. The Sermon was about not worrying but finding your dream and included the recent losses of Apple founder Steve Jobs and Kiwi Rugby Team member, Michael Denton. It was a friendly service and I found the parishioners most welcoming. Mark was an outstanding organist!

As promised, after everyone applauded his organ voluntary, he took me up into the little wooden tower which houses the bells. I saw immediately not only 2 half wheels leaning against the wall but that all the ropes were cut off below the sallies, which confirmed that they would only be chimed. There was no evidence of change ringing nor peal boards on the wall. On further inspection up top, I noticed that all the bells were hung on full wheels, which left me a little confused. I was surprised that Mark seemed to know little about the bells and I discovered later that they had indeed been hung for ringing originally but, after being recast as a heavier 6, the weight and movement caused damage to the church and this is why they are now only chimed. Hence being listed as unringable in Dove’s Guide.

After saying goodbye to Kay who was working at the Gift Shop today, Chris drove me back via Gavin Smith’s Gallery.

Gavin is a watercolour landscape artist and it was lovely to meet him and is wife. Coincidentally they had spent a couple of years working in the Cotswolds near Chastleton House, at Cornwell Glebe, which is not far from my home in Charlbury. So we were able to chat about shared knowledge of the area as well as our love of watercolours.

At midday Leigh and Dan came to collect me to take me down to their home in Taupo.

We stopped at a little town called Terau which was famous for it’s corrugated tin creations.

Then there were interesting pine Wood carvings at Tokoroa…..

After this the countryside became increasingly rugged with tall pines on either side and mountains in the distance.

We stopped for a sandwich beside some particularly tall pines and Leigh commented on the profusion of gorse which she believed had been brought over from England. The ground here was poor compared to the Cambridge area, being mainly pumice from Volcanic activity and gorse thrived well on it.

Just north of Taupo we stopped off at Larva Glass, a showroom of beautiful blown glass items many depicting colours and textures of the region.

I had seen ‘smoke’ billowing from behind some trees further down the road and could be forgiven for thinking it was a bush fire, a regular occurrance in Queensland but certainly not NZ. No, this was actually coming out of the ground. It was a geyser, hot steam coming from deep below the earth’s crust and was to be a common sight in this area of volcanic activity.

We drove through an area, Wairakei, where steam is brought up from the earth and channelled through huge aluminium pipes to generate electricity. I had never seen anything like this before in all my travels.

We drove through prawn nursery beds, large rectangular water beds containing warm spa water where prawns were bred. Our next stop was Huka Falls, an area of outstanding beauty. This was a narrow pass where a huge amount of water crashed down from the mountains into Lake Taupo. The colour of the water amid the surf was a deep deep turquoise green, just beautiful.

We watched as a small speedboat containing some tourists turned perilously near the terrifying volume of rushing water far below…. quite an adrenalin rush I would think!

At last we arrived at Taupo Lake, a huge expanse of water like a sea with snow-capped mountains in the distance. We walked a little along a jetty where many pleasure boats were tied up, promising ourselves a day trip out on one of them one day.

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