Went skiing the other weekend; the mountain was shut, so we did a road trip from Ohakune to Whanganui instead.
We passed the Ratana Church, just before Raetihi:
then drove through some quite serious rain to Whanganui. Here's the start of the trip in timelapse:
They were having a market when we got there (it was a Saturday) - they had Jesters Pies, Raku pottery that you decorate and then they fire in front of you, wicked Cornish pasties - it was great!
The riverbank looks a lot different to the last time I was there about eight years ago. There's a nice boardwalk/wharf, and a whole lot of sculptures like these:
There's a tram museum, which we didn't really look at, but it had a sweet partially derelict Austin tramline maintenance truck outside:
About every third building in the main street has a heritage plaque on it. Here's a few pictures which give you an idea of why this is:
I even managed to drag the people I was with to the Serjeant Gallery:
There was a really interesting show on about the Wanganui Computer.
No visit to Whanganui is complete without a trip up the Durie Hill Memorial Tower:
It was phenomenally windy, and some of us made ourselves feel a bit chunderous by running back down the tower.
The top of the earth elevator is next to the tower, so Blair and I went down it, then demonstrated the amazing acoustics of the tunnel at the bottom by playing Whitesnake and Nirvana on our phones, from opposite ends of the tunnel:
We had some fairly mediocre food at the café attached to the Information Centre, but then went upstairs to look at the gallery full of glasswork. All the pieces were from the Wanganui Glass Festival, and they were all amazing:
This one was made out of the glass from old CRT televisions:
The riverbank pencils farewelled us as we left:
..and the world's most stupid-yet-friendly heater welcomed us back to Ohakune:
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