A walk with my daughter :-)

Out for a walk at Duder's Regional Park a little earlier today.

I can't say I was feeling the best at the start of the day, so the suggestion that I went for a walk with my daughter seemed a much better idea than working in my office.  We headed off to Duder's Regional Park which is between Clevedon and Maraetai here in South Auckland.

My daughter enjoying the view.

The plan was to take the usual route up the hill to get some views from the high points in the reserve.  However, tempted by a route to a beach, we headed for the water.  As it happened, the tide was out, so we managed to walk right the way around the headland.  It was wonderful.  We had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed the walk.  We'd always been much higher up looking down at the sea, but now we enjoyed quite different views.

View from the coast as we walked around the headland.

Getting back to the car was rather more of a challenge than we expected.  Some challenging hill climbing was necessary to get back on the track and thankfully neither of us was injured nor was anything dropped.  I must admit that the hill was significantly steeper and higher than we originally thought.  Views from the top were quite special, but as you can see from the photos ... we need rain!

Most of the images may be viewed larger than you see in the post if you click on them.  The first image should go quite large.

My daughter enjoying the view from close by the trig point

View from the trig point.  As you can see ... we need rain!

Looking out toward Kawakawa Bay.  Such lovely blues in both sea and sky.

Clevedon ... for a ride!

We'd been looking on the map for a new place to ride our mountain bikes.  We'd also been looking at old images of New Zealand on the National Library's flickr page.  Not sure how we managed it, but we found some old photos of Clevedon which isn't very far from where we live.  We found some tracks that ran close to a river, so off we went first thing this morning.

The start of the ride was easy to find, but unfortunately, our map wasn't that good and the tracks we were going to use no longer exist!  Instead of doing a circuit we ended up coming back the way we went, but it was still a very good and picturesque ride.

Not far from where we parked the car was this rather pretty scene looking down the river.  This picture is a 5 shot HDR processed image in which I've attempted to boost the light on the trees on the right hand bank which were in the shade.  It was early morning and the sun was rising on the right of the image making most of the right hand bank very dark indeed.  I've often found HDR to be useful to bring out or enhance images.

I took a backpack for lunch, spare inner tubes and other bike essentials and then my Think Tank  Digital Holster so it was easy to find the camera when a potential shot revealed itself.  I must say I've been delighted with the Think Tank holster.  Very useful.

The third image in the post is of a waterfall a little further upstream.  Again a 5 shot HDR processed image.

All in all a great ride even though it was a bit cold and we didn't manage to go where we wanted due to out of date maps.  It was also quite good fun to try some landscape photography again as a change from bands and portraits.  Don't forget to click on the images to see them a little larger and you could also let me know what you think of them :-)