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Published: January 29th 2011
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Said goodbye to Helen’s Parents as they head up to Auckland.
Moved to camp site, was very windy and, in the process of trying to put the tent up, the wind caught the tent and one of the sections of the tent pole which, in our defence, had already been taped up before we borrowed the tent, gave up under the pressure and snapped completely in half. So, there we were, broken tent pole, having had a bit of a row about the whole process, so we had to go and try and get things fixed. We packed the rest of the tent back into the car and headed back into town. The camping shop was a bit vague about pole repairs, the second one we went to said they didn’t have any spare, but suggested we try mitre10 as they may sell spares. We headed up to Mitre10, and, as luck would have it, we managed to find a set of spare carbon fibre poles. There were about 6 sections in the bag, and, whilst they were the same width as our ones, they were also a good 2-3 inches longer, so I asked the shop assistant who had been
helping us out whether or not we might be able to get the pole cut to length. She then spotted a chap in the shop she knew and asked if he’d be able to help us, and he agreed. We then went to pay for the poles, at which point I was recognized as the last finisher in Challenge Wanaka by the woman on the till!! As well as the poles, we brought a couple of airbeds and an inflator, to try and make camping a bit more comfortable, and, with that, we then discovered the chap who was going to help us with the pole didn’t actually work at mitre10, he was the husband of the woman who had helped us. So, we followed him out to his car and, as he had to make a couple more stops, we followed him back to his house….and what a house it is too! He’s currently building a new house on one of the plots overlooking the lake. Anyway, he had a massive band saw from where he had been cutting the wood for the frame of the house, but it had such a fine blade on it he was able
to measure up the old pole lengths, and trim off 2 to exactly the right length for us! We thanked him profusely and headed back into town to grab a coffee and work out how to solve the next part of the puzzle. The poles are all held together with elastic, and we needed to, first of all, get to the knotted end in order to be able to untie it, and then, once that was done, work out how to thread the double looped elastic back through them again. In the end, the key was the new elastic which had come with the poles. This was still one strand, so I was able to thread this through the poles, tie it to the looped elastic and then tug it all back through the poles. 5 minutes later and we had a fully repaired tent pole, and so we headed back to the camp site, picked a slightly more sheltered spot, and popped the tent up without any issues, with the wind having died down a bit since earlier on. We had dinner back at the camp site, and then headed back into Wanaka to have pudding at one of the restaurants there overlooking the lake, which was lovely, and then we headed back to bed. All of a sudden, the wind really picked up, the noise of it blowing through the trees was incredible, and the tent shook a bit but held tight and then, all of a sudden, as quickly as it had come, the wind disappeared again and all was quiet…well, other than some clunking around in the night. I couldn’t work it out, it sounded like someone going through our cutlery outside. The noise stopped for a while, and then it started again, and so I grabbed a torch and stuck my head outside the tent…..to find a hedgehog licking one of the dinner plates we’d forgotten to wash up earlier on. Sadly he or she scurried away before I was able to get a photograph, but it was a reminder that we were in the countryside at least!
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