All posts by tonyives

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About tonyives

A Yorkshireman of a certain age who likes most genres of music and most makes of old car. Travel is a joy, not least to escape the British winter. Travel by bicycle is bliss and if I’m not lost in music then I’m lost in a daydream about a hot day, tens of miles to cover and the promise of a great campsite and a beer. I like to think I’m always learning and becoming wiser. However, on the latter point evidence is in short supply.

New Zealand and maybe more…

Travel

Rest Day Q & A

Q – So Tony are you enjoying it? All we hear about is grey skies, hills and gravel!

A – Absolutely. Maybe I’m a glass half empty type of guy. This is New Zealand and it’s tough to ride. I’ve not seen one other cycle tourer suggesting it’s not a route for the faint hearted! The climbing complaint is a reflection of the gradients. It’s unusual to regularly grind up so many 8% and more gradients all day. I could have done with the rest day a day earlier but another day in Mokau was never a proposition. The weather isn’t terrible but it is very mixed and changeable. The locals tell me it is poor!

Q – Are you safe and don’t you get lonely?

A – I’ve always felt perfectly safe. I’m an old bloke on a bike and don’t show any wealth so unless I was stupid enough to provoke someone why would I be in harms way? Lonely, no I’m self contained but also busy between waking and sleeping: either pedalling, navigating, washing, researching, building up the tent, cooking etc. I speak to Anna every day and also share a few WhatsApps with others. I also receive comments on my social media. I chat to folk on campsites but sometimes you can get bogged down and want to get away!

Q – Is your route and campsites set in stone?

A – Broadly because I have to plan my daily cycling and always gauge it on where I can get to with a campsite as the destination. Hence the shorter distances in NZ. I would contemplate a hotel but if there ain’t a campsite in the ‘sticks’ then there isn’t a hotel! I will adjust a route on occasion but there are no options in NZ and so am sticking to the original plan.

Q – Do you always plan to cook at night?

A – No! If I can find a hot meal then that’s a real tonic. However, I carry pasta, rice, a tin of tuna and other bits for the nights when I need to have Plan B

Q – What makes for a good rest day?

A – A hotel where I can get wi-fi, a selection of nearby shops to restock or have other facilities such as a bike shop should I need one. Another requirement is a launderette. I wash my dirty kit every night on the road but a proper wash is always a motivator so that once in a while I set off with everything spick and spam. Being in an interesting place with a few sights is a bonus.

Q – Without being too rude then at your age how are you coping with the effort?

A – I set off fit. Prior to the trip I did some big bike rides with lots of climbing. I regularly do Pilates classes and so most muscles seem to work. I also pedal at a sedate pace. If I come to a hill I think about all the days to come and how pointless it would be to ‘go for it’ up this one and pull a muscle. I try and eat well. Eating sufficiently is mandatory for fuelling and morale. If I don’t eat well I soon feel lethargic and my morale plummets. I carry a few medical supplies as well as my prescribed daily medication. Anna always knows where I am with Apple’s ‘Find A Friend’. Also in NZ I have a good friend, Paul, who is fulfilling the role of my ‘Angel of the Blacktop’ by keeping tabs on me.

Q – Is there anything you’d have done differently eg. planned, bought etc.

A – Not so far. At home I have a list of what to carry, a route planned in detail and lots of contingencies. I wish I could seriously lighten my luggage but I that would require an abandonment of camping to achieve meaningful weight loss.

Q – Any observations about the country from your saddle?

A – Despite being summer it seems quiet. Either the tourists don’t bother with the west coast or the weather has put them off. I’m pleased to see Māori folk and their culture. The touristy part I’ve experienced on another holiday. Here, seeing them in the community running establishments and their horses brings home that they’re an integral part of the country and haven’t all been overtaken by the subsequent white settlers.

Q – What’s one gift the solo traveller needs and is elevated by?

A – The kindness of strangers.

Approaching The Plymouth International hotel I pulled out my sunglasses to find the arm had become detached. The little screw I still mercifully had. I needed a small screwdriver. I asked Reception if they had. They did and for 40 minutes two ladies (yes, Katrina, women) pored over the glasses attempting to assemble them despite a miniature screw and small aperture with a spring in the way. Eventually one Receptionist phoned her husband who turned up with better kit and he and his wife assembled the glasses. No fuss, no complaints just big smiles and happy to help. (He had a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Glasgow University!)

On my rest day I did some grocery shopping and wandered about. Sadly the body clock doesn’t allow crashing out in the afternoon. Here are a few snaps:

Loved this print at the hotel. Very Hockney
A wonderful gem of a cricket ground at Pukekura Park
Found this on the outskirts of the park on a footpath
Pukekura Park
Pukekura Park
WW2 War dead at New Plymouth Boy’s High School. Included some airmen. I wondered if they’d flown out of some Yorkshire Bomber Command airfields
Beautiful waterfront
‘The Girls’
Cheese scone!
Sirloin. It was delicious

New Zealand and maybe more…

Travel

Mokau to New Plymouth

(Again, a reminder. Opening this as an email won’t show the videos I’ve included)

New Plymouth was to be a major stop on my ride, a town of 90,000, and plenty of shops and accommodation. It’s here I would spend a day off the bike resting. Coincidentally it was the town my aunt and uncle, May and George, first settled in when they emigrated to NZ in the 1950s. George ran a clothing factory.

Leaving Mokau was a distinct pleasure, I won’t return, but my route, the State Highway 3, was a major road with fast moving traffic including trucks. If I was concerned then at a cafe in Mokau, where I had some breakfast and stocked up for lunch, I met a chap who alerted me to the perils that awaited. He was the type of man who I imagine as a small child pulled the legs off spiders for sadistic pleasure. Relaying my future misery before climbing into his 4×4 was probably the highlight of his day. His main information was that roadworks were ahead with gravel underfoot. I did advise that when it came to gravel I had seen the movie, bought the book and invested in the T shirt.

A sign of things to come

When eventually it turned to Green the long queue of traffic behind me gave me space. A few hundred metres down this road and onto the gravel the ride was tricky:

Gravel that I and my 28mm tyres has known and loved Part 5

Eventually a chap in a works truck thought it best that I (and the bike) got on board and he’d ferry me to the end of the roadworks. I did ask, after I got comfortable as to whether he might continue to New Plymouth? Bless him, I did have to explain, as he offered excuses, that I was only joking (or half at least.)

The roadworks continued with several traffic lights and it broke up the traffic. Consequently I had a traffic free experience. Being a major road then all significant gradients had been ironed out and I think I only had one 7% section but usually 3 and 4%.

About half way there I got a WhatsApp from Anna. Had I noticed the cafe coming up? So I looked up and lo and behold my observant spouse was steering me toward a flat white and a tarte au citron. New Plymouth started to present itself many miles out from the centre. It was the largest town around.

Yeehaw!

I found the hotel and easily checked in. To my delight it had a ‘Guest Laundry’. So for £4 I washed and dried my kit.

I then went walkabout. I wanted to find the street my aunt and uncle lived on. I did but it had all been redeveloped and new waterfront houses were in situ.

Woolcombe Terrace
51 miles and 2,300 feet of climbing

New Zealand and more…

Travel

Marokopa to Mokau

(NOTE – if you’re looking at this in the email then the videos, I’ve included, won’t show up. To see the videos in the blog then open the post on the website or in ‘Reader’. The top of the email offers you these options. It’s a simple matter. Just click!)

I’d left the campsite before anyone else had stirred. There were two Dutch men in a camper van, a New Zealand lady showing around the area a Japanese friend and two elderly, formerly local, caravan dwellers who I found difficulty in escaping to complete my chores. He could talk! We discussed the water supply and he encouraged me to put a drop of bleach in the drinking water to kill off what ever lurked within it still. I nodded sagely and thought there’s a snowball in hell’s chance I’m doing that. Lastly, there were a couple who turned up late on with two very young children. Judging by their loud banter and a liberal spraying of phlegm I’d guess they were also Dutch.

The sky showing a familiar grey!

The day was grey with the usual misty wetness as I immediately had to climb. However, the views were awesome when I got up the hill and it started to look like the NZ I expected to find.

Just awesome

Lots of lush vegetation, rivers and streams, soaring hillsides and endless sheep and cattle. I must research the markets NZ have for sheep products. Wool now costs more to shear than it’ll fetch when sold and certainly, in the UK, I imagine the major demand for lamb or sheep meat is from immigrant minorities only. As with cheese and chicken it seemed the locals didn’t like it. (I have received dissent in the comments from the last Post about the locals not liking cheese. Frankly here in the ‘sticks’ judging by its absence I’d suggest they’d rather walk through machine gun fire than eat it.)

The road was free of traffic bar a couple of quad bikes and then a logging truck!

Caution from Mr Logger

The asphalt had long disappeared and I contemplated some climbs to come on the gravel. However, I thought they’re never going to make logging trucks climb up gravel roads. They need traction and these roads can become mud or simply deform with the weather and their weight. I was right and asphalt resumed on the start of climbs. However the road was steep and faced with depleting my limited reserves I got off and pushed for a few metres.

Mile after mile of these gradients
The pusher

Even when the road was asphalt there could be edges slip away.

Gulp! It was a several hundred feet drop

This was not an uncommon sight on all my riding days. I hope that this didn’t involve a vehicle plummeting into the depths. For some time I followed a river and made better progress before I exited this logging route detour and hit the main road to Mokau.

Mokau was a coastal settlement that had a police station, school and a few shops on the main State Highway 3 between Hamilton and New Plymouth. Huge American made trucks literally crashed through most pulling trailers. There was, I discovered later, an attractive beach but closer investigation was diminished by high winds and rain.

Mokau beach

I found the campsite replete with restaurant and checked in. I had been low on food in my panniers, ravenous and wading into fish and chips was wonderful.

Less wonderful was the absence of a phone signal. My provider, a shop keeper told me, had terrible coverage here. Oh dear! Also the campsite was old, unloved, basic and had no wi-fi in fact I was the only person staying.

Given the major road it sits on it must have such a well known miserable reputation that all steer clear of it. I took shelter in the communal room many campsites had. In line with the site’s decrepitude the light didn’t work!

Drying tent and my bed for the night
A memorable shower block

In fact seeing no good reason to camp on the grass I pulled my sopping tent into this room and used the couch as my bed for the night. (The tent dried overnight.) Frankly it was a practical solution but overall a miserable night.

41 miles and 780 metres of climbing

New Zealand and maybe more…

Travel

Kawhia to Marokopa – 44 miles

Sadly, despite an estuary side pitch I never saw the water next to the shore. The tide came in during the night and had left by the morning. However, I did hear it lapping against the shore as I occasionally stirred from my deep sleep during the night. Another waking time was 3.24 am when one of the several contractors staying on site in a cabin fired up his diesel truck and headed off to work.

Sensational pitch

If you’re cocooned inside a camper van or caravan you have some sound insulation: in a tent you have none. The other crews all were up and around after 5am; so was I as I had to deal with a wet tent after another tumultuous dawn downpour. Amongst this batch of loggers was a lad smoking some cannabis. Clearly his early morning ‘pick me up’. Let’s hope he’s nowhere near heavy equipment. Looking at signage there are considerable concerns over water preservation normally around here. I feel like a Messiah as I have brought daily lashings of rain to wherever I go!

I make some porridge and have a coffee everyday before I leave the campsite but am always interested in something else for sustenance on the road. Kawhia had two stores run by Chinese/Asian ladies and some essential purchases were made.

I don’t think so

Frankly, it’s all ‘industrial’ grade food such as pies and fried food for the contractors. Of course, it’s hearty enough for me but I’m starting to wish for something else now. Despite all the cattle there is no cheese? I’ve not seen it on any menu or in a sandwich. If this wasn’t perplexing enough then your average Kiwi has issues with chicken as well. I wish I’d known this in advance and arrived with my expectations adjusted.

After some purchases it was time to go starting with an enormous hill that foretold the day again. For my entertainment and to make the ride go more easily I often listen to the radio or podcasts. I can get evening football matches or mid evening news programmes. As for the news when in the UK it all seems a lot more engaging and current. Over here you listen with a little detachment thinking it’s the same old issues, people and problems merely rotated.

Today was all tarmac and the focus was on one 262 metre climb. As I’m climbing the gradient was variable and thankfully it eased a bit as I ground slowly upwards. My Garmin computer tells me when I’ve reached the summit and on the particular hill I celebrated with an egg sandwich!

The beauty of New Zealand is starting to appear. I like anything rural but we all look for drama or eye catching. A feature is of course the small little hills that seem to have been dropped everywhere with their pointy appearance and always covered in grass and often livestock.

Some respite came with cycling beside a lake and it even produced a bench where I felt compelled to pose for a photo. Sitting options are absent in this countryside and this table and bench were quite a find! (I’m easily pleased, I know.)

These short days are because the camping or lodging options are limited in the area and so you take what you can. Frankly the all day climbing with little nothing flat meant it was hard work as soon as you sat on the saddle. One run of flat came along beside a lake before more quad burning ascension.

Soon I was bowling into Marokopa and as I was cycling west I endured a headwind, if fact if you steer west there is always a headwind, but it was flat at least on the final run in. The number of horses in the fields are many and I, later, asked a fellow camper about them. They’re popular pets and very much part of the Māori culture. He was visiting but had been a local. He said back in the day children rode them to school, tethered them for the day, and then rode home after school. These indigenous people quickly adopted the animals after the Europeans arrived and, to my eye, they all look fine specimens living nice lives in lush pastures. There are hundreds. I suspect, amongst themselves, like me, they must moan about the weather.

Marokopa beach with the tide out

So Marokopa was (only just) more than a one horse town. However apart from some smart houses, that looked like second homes, and a campsite it had absolutely nothing else! In a fairly deserted campsite I paddled about doing my laundry, making dinner and eventually settled down for sleep to the sound of the nearby ocean with no contractors in sight (or sound). This is why I tour.

Kawhia to Marokopa – 44 miles with 2,749 feet of climbing

New Zealand and maybe more

Travel

Raglan to Kawhia – 32 miles

The good news is that the scenery all started to look more sumptuous but the cycling remained brutal. At single figure speeds I ground up the countless hills that were between me and the next campsite.

I suggest it’s raining over there

I haven’t seen any other cycle tourers so far, whether on the road or at a campsite. I think this may reflect my pioneering spirit. After the tiring ride into Raglan I woke up the next day feeling Jesus had visited me overnight and instructed me to pick up my bed (inside the tent) and walk. I felt leggy but able to embark on the next mountaineering stage. Maybe I was getting my touring legs.

Overnight it had hammered down and after a dry start first thing to the day I was soon reaching for the waterproofs. Cycling along I listened to Coventry City vs Middlesbrough on TalkSPORT radio. I’m still slightly in awe that I can also WhatsApp Anna in a video call as I cycle along. This digital technology is a thing of great wonder. However, it’s a fact that when I finish my call with her the heavens open (every time).

So lush
Agapanthus in great quantities by the roadside
Not a bad spot

Eventually the beast that named itself gravel arrived. It was variable in coverage, adverse cambers were common, mud in places and often the side of the road had given way. Being a hero I battled on: I had no option.

Gravel with a view

I emerged a wiser man on to a main road with a run into Kawhia.

Palm trees on entering Kawhia
Gosh, not for me!

The campsite had a mixture of tourists, in their camper vans, and then some contractors. They were there for the duration and whilst nice lads they left the kitchen a mess and one smoked pot! As they were up from Rotorua for the logging I imagine they were using heavy equipment. Let’s hope the chap with the wacky backy wasn’t working heavy dangerous equipment.

I opted out of catering and a concession van opened up and I bought some fish & chips. I think it was snapper, whatever that is.

A man’s work is never done

I was sooner in my hutch looking at the inside of my eyelids wondering what the next day would bring and would the scenery continue to be delightful.

New Zealand and maybe more…

Cycling Adventures

‘And away…’ Auckland (Manukau) to Port Waikato – 44 miles. Port Waikato to Raglan – 81 miles

So after the visit to Carole and her mother’s grave (see my previous post) it was time to head south. The bike had gone together well. One issue was leaving behind a large cardboard box I had transported it in. (Under darkness I snuck it near the hotel bins.) The departure route was loaded onto my Sat Nav computer on my handlebars and wending my way through the Auckland traffic I soon found the city behind me. My recollection of my previous visit to Auckland was it being a city of a series of short sharp hills, I feared that was to come as I headed south and then west. After the cold and damp of Yorkshire it was truly liberating to be outdoors in morning temperatures of 17ºC with the promise of more to come. An immediate reality was that all my UK winter training had been on a bicycle that weighed a third of what I was now pedalling. The first day must be taken easy so that I still had some ‘legs’ tomorrow.

My Instagram start

Setting off I was making progress through early Sunday morning Auckland. I saw joggers and little else before I was soon in the countryside.

My first stop was Tuakau where I found lunch and also bought a sandwich for later. I think ‘flat white’ coffee was invented in NZ. I had to sample one.

From here I headed west into a difficult headwind.

This flag shows the problem!

The route was fairly flat and briefly another cyclist had joined me for a bit of company.

Reaching Port Waikato I soon had the tent up.

This would be home for most of the next month
Day 1 — 44 miles

In the kitchen I talked with another tourist. This time from Canada. She seemed well travelled and was enjoying the drive around the coast. Soon it was time for bed. Unfortunately being a Holiday Park there were children tearing around. I woke up a couple of times and then found some earplugs!

I woke up early and was soon on my way through this sleepy settlement with just a few drivers off to work.

I and enjoyed the start as I cycled along talking with Anna on WhatsApp with a tailwind. She must have been a lucky omen as when she rang off the heavens opened.

Getting sodden I found a cafe for some sustenance and bought a sandwich for later.

From here I went into farmland. All of it with livestock as it was far too hilly for arable. It looked a little like the Yorkshire Dales or Peak District. Oh, it was so hilly with many 8% hills. as I entered my eighth hour on the bike my buttocks hurt, I had cramp in both feet and my legs were jelly. I was relieved to see Raglan. It was the experience and mental side of my personality that saw me up 1,550 metres of climbing.

The weather was scorching with hot sun when I arrived. In a flash the temperature fell and the heavens opened. All my laundry got wet again: I’d have to pack it wet tomorrow and take it to the next website to dry. I trudged into Raglan where Felicia from Colorado confirmed my choice of the Ledge Burger was a good one.

They don’t tip in NZ. She was pleased when I broke the rule. Back at the campsite Gen X, who had been noisy and excitable, had been rained off and were now seemingly in their tents. I joined them and fell into a torpor.

Port Waikato to Raglan

New Zealand and maybe more – Family

Journal, Travel

Carole

My earliest recollections as a child are like fragments of broken pieces that lie scattered after falling from what was undoubtedly a large picture. My earliest years were in north Leeds living on a street, Woodliffe Crescent, just off Scott Hall Road and it was here I lived obviously with my parents and sister until I was five years old and from here we moved to a village, Barwick-in-Elmet to the east of the city. Although my memory is piecemeal I remember school in Chapel Allerton and a wind up toy bear who never fully recovered after being sped through playground puddles. The street with our house was a cul-de-sac and safe to play in although Scott Hall Road was busy with traffic and I think we lost one or even two shelties who made the fatal mistake of getting loose onto that road.

Amongst these ‘fragments’ was meeting a young girl. My recollection is in our garden, she’s sat on a three wheeler bike clutching an ice cream cornet but playing with it rather than embarking on my own probable action of devouring it as quickly as I could without brain freeze. This was my cousin Carole visiting with her aunt, May, from New Zealand. I knew, and it was later confirmed, that Carole had challenges. She’d caught meningitis when even younger and this had changed her life. It would be fair to say I hadn’t given her a lot of thought over the intervening 60 odd years but neither had I to the other nine children, my cousins, of my mother’s five siblings. It only has been Anna’s brilliant forensic genealogy that has found cousins and they are all now becoming, with their spouses, fast friends.

In the discussions with the ‘cousins’ any knowledge of the children of the second eldest ‘sibling’, May, were lost. We knew that May and her husband, George, had emigrated to New Zealand in the early 1950s and whilst we could recollect various meetings and the careers of Carole’s older brother, Malcolm, we assumed that due to Carole’s earlier health misfortune maybe she would have passed away by now. In tracking down Malcolm he confirmed she was alive and living in sheltered accommodation in Auckland. She has never met any of her other ten cousins in decades; I was to be the first. In meeting I imagined it would not mean a lot to her but, for me it was simply enormous.

When discussing her with Malcolm, and my visit to Auckland, it was he who suggested I meet her. I so wanted to do this but for him to volunteer this was a great relief. So I met Carole but before that I visited my aunt’s grave. She’d lain here since a heart attack in 1975 took her.

May and George, my aunt and uncle

My uncle, a person I never met, had lived to a grand old age of 99 and in his latter years he had moved to Brisbane to be near family. Clearly he needed some family support himself at this great age.

So I ventured to the northern Auckland suburbs and thanks to the internet (and Anna’s detective work) knew where my aunt laid. It still took some finding due to poor signage in this massive cemetery of many faiths and sections. However after 30 minutes I found her.

For over 50 years it’s been here at Waikumete

So from here I continued a few miles north into a very hilly residential area and found my cousin.

With some flowers I brought

What can I say: for a couple of hours we talked about her family and her life. She loves the church and also her trips to see family in Brisbane where her other relatives live now. I wondered how well we could communicate; her communication skills were fine but a life in a home means her world view is very curtained. Here she’s well cared for, safe and lives with other women who have their mental health challenges. Carole is 74 in September.

I felt I should have been more curious over the years and got to Auckland sooner but, I suppose, better late than never. In fairness it is a long way from Acaster Malbis. A very happy day for me.

New Zealand and maybe more…

Music

Getting here!

Getting to the start of your holiday would never be a blog but getting to New Zealand requires about 23 hours in the air and, in my case, incarceration in a space so small that retrieving anything off the floor would defy the flexibility of a small chimpanzee. It was hard going and glancing at the screen to find that you still had another nine hours to go before reaching Auckland, after leaving Dubai seven hours ago, is not uplifting. I was sat on the second row behind a bulkhead on the second flight. Isn’t that where they seat young children so they can be plonked in a bassinet on a shelf I hear you all ask? Yes. So would a toddler, unaware that he was confined in a ridiculous small space, clamped to his parents for what must feel like most of his childhood not wail and complain? Yes. However, after a crash course in intensive crying and toddler tantrums through our recently becoming grandparents I coped well as I cranked up the volume on the inflight entertainment.

Your hero gets set for the marathon

After being denied boarding by Qatar Airways in 2024, due to a worn passport, I obviously avoided them and selected Emirates. Apart from the route, times and cost the other thing to obsess about was the weight allowance. It was 30kg in the hold and a strict 7kg cabin bag. This would be surely enough for any tourist but remember I’m packing a bicycle and enough luggage and kit to sustain a camping trip. For literally weeks I weighed things and moved them around the bags and got to damn near 30kg for the hold. Turning up to Check-In at Manchester airport they asked me the weight, as well as had I deflated my tyres! They didn’t weigh the box or the other bag with 6kg in it. So much for all that anxious planning. On the 7kg cabin bag they never even looked at or weighed my bag as I boarded. At the Gate they’re handling a few hundred people and the last thing they’re thinking about is your hand luggage. Obviously we’re all scarred by Ryanair whose pernicious luggage policy is all about making a few extra €’s.

Last time at Auckland we’d queued for a long time at Security and read the signs that told you about their bio security priorities in NZ. On this basis I’d decided to declare what meagre provisions I’d brought. So when I wheeled through my big bike box I got asked what food I’d brought? I said some gels and packets of porridge. ‘No meat or honey etc.?’ Well, we’ve all seen these TV fly on the wall programmes where someone has their bag opened to find half a horse’s head (only the edible part of course) and pickled chicken entrails accompanied by a weak explanation that they didn’t know there were restrictions on animal body parts as they feigned to have a tenuous understanding of English! Anyway they scanned my bags and I was free to proceed to the car rental.

I think they meant New Zealand rather than the Sixt car rental desk

If you’d ask me what car would I have no plan to buy it’d be an EV: I have range anxiety and never anything Chinese. I won’t be helping the Chinese Communist Party unload subsidised cars on the West as they destroy car makers in their march to global hegemony. So, of course, I discovered I’d hired a Chinese EV. A Geely, this manufacturer own Volvo as well. Anyway as I shuffled along slowly in heavy traffic it repeatedly told me to concentrate on the road and seemed to be watching me (I later found out it was with a camera on the steering column.) I’d like to think I was occupying a person sat in a bunker in Beijing watching an elderly man seemingly juggling a water bottle, peering at his Sat Nav and singing loudly to The Mothers Of Invention whilst he ruminated on how the British ever had an empire if this was a specimen of their talent pool.

A car with the looks and charisma of a breeze block

Anyway I got to the hotel but couldn’t work out how to switch the car off. So I relied on the well known, fail safe, strategy of opening the car door hoping this would trip something. It did and surprisingly no warning came up on the dashboard telling me that bailing out at speed was injurious to my well being. This all made me think he’d given up on me and gone for lunch.

So for Friday 13th things had gone well and next it was the challenging project of Tony vs. jet lag. I worried this would play out over several days.

On The Road Again…

Travel

New Zealand and maybe more…

It’s 2024 since I’ve cycle toured bar a few short days last May along Hadrian’s Wall with the Magnificent Varley. It’s now time to go again. Winter touring means, in part, the pursuit of better weather abroad and that means quite a long flight. So I plumped for New Zealand. Why ? I once foolishly asked some followers of this drivel where should I go and an old ex-colleague, David Moore, volunteered New Zealand. It stuck in my head that maybe he was right. I had looked at it before but the road system isn’t fulsome and the main roads can be busy and if you seek lesser routes you have to have gravel roads. Gravel roads and trails are the recommended touring routes: ordinarily this is not Tony country. However NZ did seem a gap on the CV. So after a few late nights and a reach out to fellow tourers on Facebook I discovered a way to get from Auckland to Wellington albeit with a little gravel to cover. This trip will be on the North Island and not the South Island. With Anna we’d taken a holiday on the North and South Island in 2023 with a cursory time on the North island before we concentrated on the South Island.

I’m planning to post quite a bit on Instagram and should you be unable to receive enough joy with only my blog then this may truly help you fill your boots. If you can’t fathom the QR Code search for my name (Tony.Ives) on Instagram.

So out came the lists of things to pack, applications for a visa, a bike inspection, route planning in fine detail, accommodation or campsites to research and a ‘pretty please’ to my long suffering wife to deplete her savings and disappear for a few weeks. Funnily enough this latter task was easily accomplished! Coupled to this was getting fit. I cycle all the time and so my buttocks have been broken in many decades ago but I think this ride has some daunting days and in preparation I have gone out in cold and miserable weather to climb up brutal hills in the Peak District and the Yorkshire Wolds to give myself a fighting chance. Amongst the inclement challenges was local Yorkshire flooding where avoidance, with failing daylight, retracing my route wasn’t wise and the option was to get off and walk along roads with icy water up my calves. My carbon road bike, even with mudguards weighs around 10.5kg. When I start touring my touring bike and all the luggage will be c30kg. The touring bike has a lot more lower gears but, as you can imagine, the first few days, with all that weight takes some getting used to.

Some final tuning up at Cycle Heaven

As if by Divine Intervention Anna discovered a cousin of mine who resides In Auckland and the gravestone of an aunt (her mother). I cannot remember having met the aunt. She made a rare trip back to Blighty when I was probably about 5 years old. However, I recollect meeting the cousin on that visit (a very long time ago!) and, for one reason or another, thought she was long dead now. I’ll meet her shortly after landing and then I’ll wend my way slowly down the west coast.

Heading south

In Wellington will be Paul, I hope (!), an old friend from my Manchester Polytechnic days who splits his days between the UK and NZ. I would have posted a photograph of him but the most recent one has of him strangely sat astride a camel. We see each other during the year nowadays, usually at cricket matches, and after the gravel roads and hills I will be ready for a proper bed and that beer.

Bike nicely stuffed into an old bike box I got from a local bike shop.

I have some concerns that this may be quite a daunting ride but as Mao Tse Tung once opined ‘the longest journey starts with the first step’ or pedal stroke in my case. Oh yes and there is ‘maybe more’ but you’ll have to wait.

Kim Richey – Newbald Live – January 31 2026

Music

The car park was full at the Newbald Village Hall or as the branding would have it, Newbald Live. The venue has had a considerable makeover since I last visited and it now provides a great room for visiting artists to play. There was a full house to see the latest Americana/Country act booked for the delectation of the folk from East Yorkshire. Richey is no stranger to our shores and it’s a treat to find her out in the country at lesser stops to play her selection of songs to new and old audiences. Her catalogue is one of the strongest I know and it has been consistent over nearly 30 years of recording. She played a selection of songs from her 1995 debut Kim Richey through to her 2024 release Every New Beginning.

The voice is still a tour de force that’s a beautiful instrument. To accompany herself she played chords on an acoustic guitar although the ‘pin drop’ numbers were when she put down her guitar and left the playing to her accompanist, Luke Brighty, on a restrained electric guitar. Take The Cake, off her last album, was one such song along with Girl In A Car all the way back from 2002. Between the songs stories came thick and fast, she looked back on her early years with amusing self-deprecation. She was asked by her record label about her ideas for a title for her debut LP? Without missing a beat she volunteered ‘Child Of The Wild Blue Yonder’. They heard her out and then called it Kim Richey! Over her long career she’s mixed with many bright lights in the Americana/Country firmament but she only name dropped Aaron Lee Tasjan, a neighbour in East Nashville who’s worked and toured with her. Joy Rider was one such collaboration where she sings about the childlike curiosity of a young boy who explores the world on his noisy motorbike.

The hits or singles were ticked off as she played Those Words We Said, Come Around and  The Way It Never Was. Then it was time to play her last two songs and quickly promote her merch including tea towels (that she’d spent a lot of time lugging around various gigs with little success!) These songs were the fabulous Chapel Avenue and then a singalong I’m Alright. We all shuffled into the dark chilly Yorkshire night with a glow after a very special evening.

Welcome Max! – Week 5 : 2026

Journal

The dynasty was increased by one when Maximilian Theodore was delivered in Wythenshawe on January 27th  to parents, Sophie and Harry. Both mother and son are well and safely back at home. From having no grandchildren 25 months ago we’ve now got three. After having had two daughters and then two granddaughters (Isabella and Elodie) it was a pleasure to welcome a boy into the family (although I will love the girls no less.)

I hate doctoring the images to hide the child’s identity but this is the instruction of the parents

I did quip that I now have a challenge ensuring that he didn’t grow up to be a Manchester United fan given his birth place. A friend sagely pointed out that most Manchester United fans have never been anywhere near Manchester and so I should be safe in that regard!

An old person being stupid with a box on his nose whilst a granddaughter attempts to grab the box. Happy days!

Our flat near the respective parents will be now busier as his sister and cousin come and go. Given Anna’s trailing across the other side of the Pennines for childcare on the busy winter M62 motorway or unreliable train service it’s a very timely acquisition. Around Bramhall we know where the playgrounds, cafes, ducks (to feed) are . This includes the pet shop to enjoy the guinea pigs, rabbits, budgies and hamsters at a safe distance behind glass! I’m sure by the time Max gets on this circuit his big sister will be very smug and showing him the ropes.

Blessed.

Moores Furniture Group Closure

Moores

Now widely in the public domain it does seem appropriate to publish a blog that confirms that Moores Furniture Group has shut. This happened during January after the existing management were unable to continue trading despite seeking a new investor/s to sustain the business.

Firstly, this is a considerable blow to the 450+ employees who must now seek alternative employment. Many have been employed at Moores for decades and this will be quite an upheaval for them and their families. Even to the casual observer after the previous owners, Hilco, stepped back in September 2025 it seemed that the firm would fail. The company needed their financial support to continue sustainably. There would be no takeover as there is considerable capacity in the kitchen furniture industry as well as more efficient and profitable operators who are all happy to absorb any business that would now become available. The administrator did find a buyer for the intellectual property and, presumably, immediate order book in the form of Wren Kitchens. Wren is a massive retail kitchen operation with manufacturing and showrooms. However, they have what the industry calls a ‘contract’ division that supplies directly to business, rather than retail customers. No doubt Wren Contract saw Moores’ demise as an opportunity to take over their existing order book with house builders and maybe other b2b customers. I know nothing of their plans but I’d assume that after offering the existing customers continuity of supply on building sites already underway they would then seek to substitute Moores’ cabinets and designs with Wren products?

In the wider locality there are other cabinet manufacturers and some of the skilled operatives may find employment along with sales people and installers who may find a home within Wren Contracts? Moores operated a ‘final salary’ or defined benefit pension scheme that will now shut and ‘fall’ in to the government run Pension Protection Fund (PPF). The PPF will mean that all those who were in the scheme, whether retired or yet to do so will receive pensions. The level of the pension is dependent on age and value of the pension prior to the scheme closing. It has a number of variables that can be explored by looking at the PPF website. The PPF will pay existing pensions for as long as it takes them to take over the old scheme and integrate it into the PPF. This could take up to two years.

So what happened for the company to fail? It really, in my opinion, has nothing to do with the existing management who attempted to make the company competitive and increase sales on a shoestring budget from too small a sales base. I watched the organisation from the proximity of being a pension trustee for many years and, to me, the size of the factory and its attendant cost meant that it needed considerable sales and volume to break even. The early years after the 2008/9 financial crisis saw the company jettisoning business from customers who were deemed to be too hard to service or marginally profitable.

The dramatic increase in the offer of installation had been catastrophic as the company struggled to do it successfully and get paid in full or on a timely basis. Installation didn’t enjoy the efficiencies and systems that ran a factory. This was all about taking the cabinets etc to a muddy field (building site) and fitting it and then waiting until the property was at a stage that the builder determined before you could invoice. There was a lot of steps and hurdles to overcome before you got paid; not least as other trades visited the kitchen and may damage the installation for which you were still responsible.

However, it’s a known statistic that it’s seven times more difficult to get a new customer than retain one. The then management had the belief that they were ridding themselves of ‘problems’ and it would put the company into profit. From 2008/9 the company lost approximately half the workforce (c500 people) as the directors embarked on enormous redundancy programmes. I fell in one of the earliest programmes.

I think in the years since 2008 the company only made a profit once. This desperate situation didn’t close the business as the ultimate owners of Masco and Hilco either kept injecting cash into the operation or underwrote loans and debts. So the seeds of its demise go back a long way and eventually money and time ran out.

I grieved some time ago and was surprised that it staggered through to 2026. I still have many true friends and wonderful memories of my time at Moores. Those work memories include private jets around the USA, launching a kitchen furniture range at the NEC, meeting the then Prince of Wales with Anna, export trips to China, Taiwan, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Abu Dhabi and other exotic locations. Leading the public sector salesforce to grow sales by 50% to deliver sales of over £30m in 2006. Whilst there I had the positions of Purchasing and Design Manager, Commercial Director, Marketing Director, Public Sector Sales Director and then running the Installation division: a job I was parachuted in to turn around. It was an operational disaster. There were then 500 building sites nationwide. With hard work by many people this went well, calm was being restored but the company decided it could all be done more cheaply and wanted to change the whole management structure and process. By the time I was tapped on the shoulder and shown the door the house building industry was gripped by a downturn as a result of the global slow down and shedding cost was a priority.

At Moores I learned all about business, which informed my politics, personal values and character. It was influential in forming me as a person. I was there over 23 years, whilst there I married, had a family and (if I could track it all) had many milestones in my life whilst turning up to Thorp Arch for so many years.

Record Of The Week # 172

Music

Jay Buchanan – Weapons Of Beauty

Buchanan is the vocalist with, rockers, Rival Sons. This outfit has been Grammy nominated in the rock category and Buchanan’s sonorous yet powerful tones are a key reason. For those unfamiliar with his vocals David Gray has a similar attractive voice in timbre and resonance (but not possessing Buchanan’s 747 roar when he unleashes it.) After Buchanan sojourned in the Mojave Desert to find tranquility and space to pen a solo album he turned to Cobb to produce and craft this debut. Cobb has produced several Rival Sons releases. 

The excellent and poignant ballad, Caroline, opens the album and is an introduction to his powerful story about loss, grief and reflection (about her illness and health.) Buchanan says the emotions could be applied to other scenarios; the video is well worth a look. High and Lonesome, is a co-write with Cobb and this languorous bluesy waltz allows you to wallow in his beautiful achy tones. Sway, written to his wife, is an intimate ballad that has him swoop and soar in expressing his love. With a floaty John McVie type bass line Great Divide comes across as less pensive and earnest albeit about an ending relationship.

Leonard Cohen’s Dance Me to the End of Love gets a soulful rendition sounding like one of Buchanan’s heroes, Van Morrison. Here the vibe and tune overtakes the words as the take away. Cobb has deployed many arrangements throughout including strings and it’s this variety that complements the voice that repeatedly dazzles. Buchanan’s articulate profundity comes to the fore on Weapons of Beauty – “Give me the songs to sing in the fight / these weapons of beauty will destroy the night / it’s been so long. Give me the words / to say what I feel / I could speak this dream, for to make it real…”As an overall sound it’s not a long way from The Red Stray Clays with its pace, lyrical ruminations and sound. The Clays’ Brandon Coleman sings his songs like he’s holding court and Buchanan similarly dominates. On this latter point it can’t be a coincidence that Cobb has produced both. This is a glorious release 

Record Of The Week # 171

Music

Tylor & The Train Robbers – Live

Tylor Ketchum’s country rock band is based in Boise, Idaho up toward the Canadian border. It’s around here that the band tours bringing their tight and pulsating rhythms to some original lyrics. For those unfamiliar with their sound then The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers and a little Tom Petty comes to mind. If you like your rock guitars then fill your boots. One of my eternal regrets after becoming aware of their catalogue was finding that I was two weeks early to a gig according to a bill poster I saw in Jackson, Wyoming. For all that this live recording compensates as the band work through 23 songs mainly from their four studio long player releases.

The hiring of Adam Odor to produce is a masterstroke. Odor’s been behind the desk on the Silverada and Mike & The Moonpies releases. All those releases ‘sing’ and, not least, because Odor finds the instruments behind the vocalist and promotes them into a palpitating rhythm with pedal steel and lead guitar always doing something interesting. The band have some killer cuts including The Of Ballad Black Jack Ketchum, a seven minute epic about a relative from the 1800s who was hung after a career of robbing banks and trains. This is followed by the title of their 2021 album Non-Typical Find, where a sun’s glint off a rib cage draws, way down in a valley, a walker to find a human skeleton and the tragic story of the woman’s demise after some perilous and then fatal hitchhiking.

The band keep it interesting with changes in pace between songs and I Got You starts with harmonica and some picking by Antonio Vazquez to a rhythm where you could imagine the audience dancing. Sat on a galloping drum beat Ketchum’s nasal tones advise that he and ‘his baby’ are Good At Bad News with sparkling pedal steel from Rider Soran that appears like shards of sunlight appearing between trees as you pass by them at speed. Hum Of The Road, another album title track enjoys harmonies on the chorus as Ketchum’s brothers, Tommy Bushman, on drums and Jason Ketchum on bass propel from the back of the stage. There are a handful of covers and the most attractive is Feel A Whole Lot Better from The Byrds where Soran and Vazquez exchange licks and the brothers lean in to provide harmonies behind Ketchum.

This is a long album with maybe too many tracks but it’s a reward for a loyal following who long wanted the live experience on record; for me it was time well spent.

Record Of The Week # 170

Music

Courtney Marie Andrews – Valentine

Andrews’ current, considerable, stature has been achieved through consistent quality records since her 2016 breakthrough, Honest Life. Parallels with early Joni Mitchell may seem too easy to conjure up but she has a dream of a voice that draws you in like a siren, a considerable talent on guitar and piano, sophisticated arrangements and the regular mining of her own personal life for lyrics. Inspiration for these songs came from relationships and the stress of seeing someone close struggle with ill health. These experiences took her to a plight, she calls, limerence: a mental state of being madly in love where reciprocity is uncertain and from here all sorts of insecurities, mood swings and emotions kick in. To deal with such turbulence, she says, the last year has been one of a lot of writing, hiking and travel.

With brutal honesty she wades into a selection of intimate lyrics that often reflect an observant and defiant mindset yet with compassion and support – “Close the curtain, say your confession / My lips are sealed at your discretion / It’s a scary world full of cons and clowns / A lot of bad people who will tear you down / Not me, no way”. The haunting Cons & Clowns comes replete with angelic harmonising, muffled snares, chiming piano chords and flute. Outsider with its plucked guitar chords and resonating bass sits on a foundation of sweet extended strings. Here Andrews is on the defensive seeking a place where she won’t be hurt “as it’s too painful looking in”. Little Picture of a Butterfly explores the helplessness of things we can’t control, again with relationships to the fore – “Guess your love is not a cure / Guess I should’ve known better / Guess I’m throwing out that sweater / After all that time went by / All I get is a butterfly”. With her voice to the fore we have fragments of jazz flute before a striding insistent beat grows and Andrews starts to become assertive of where she’s now headed after the heartbreak.

With, her producer and contributing musician, Bernhardt she’s created interesting arrangements and varied instrumentation that give up more on each listen. I find her voice compelling and capable of making me absorb all her heartfelt sentiments. I think this may be my favourite of hers to date.