Still "fluffing" (another name for "planning")!

​Less than three weeks to go. Belinda is still busy managing a few remaining lambs and calves, with my occasional help!  This has been a bit more time-consuming than planned - damn animals never seem to play ball when you want them to.

A little progress has been made on final thinking / planning but still some to do.  The main thing that has occupied my time for the last few days has been preparing a set of combined trail notes and maps from the very recently released 2015 version of same (from Te Araroa website).  This has been a much larger task than I originally thought, even though it was based on last years's fantastic version produced by Kirstine Collins.  Anyway, after numerous hours (too many as my neck, shoulders and eyes will attest to!) I have completed a set for the North Island.  The South Island will just have to wait for now - either in the next couple of weeks or, if not, and if no-one else produces one, I may have time during what we hope will be a two week or so break at home between islands.  We shall see!

Anyway, if anyone reading this wants the new combined North Island maps, they can be found here on Dropbox - you will see from the folders/files that they are in both original pdf format and in smaller jpg format (as individual maps - better for mobile devices).  Please look at the README.rtf file first - thanks.