I’m down in Hamilton for a week of work and the weather is perfect. This means I can go for big walks straight after work and now that Daylight Savings has started it’s not dark till much later allowing for really big walks.

So I set off in some random direction I’d never been before away from the familiar river with the intention of just walking wherever for 30 minutes and then turning around and heading back – giving me a decent one hour walk. After about 10 minutes I wondered where I was and remembered I could check out Google maps on my phone and hopefully it would tell me exactly where I was and what (if anything) would be nearby.

On the map I noticed a big blob of blue to my left (the river however was on my right) so that got me curious and I walked up a hill which I wouldn’t normally have walked up to discover much to my delight a huge lake!!! I had no idea there was such a pretty lake in Hamilton and wondered if it was called Lake Hamilton. According to Google Maps it wasn’t Lake Hamilton – it was Lake Rotorua. A tad confusing considering I was nowhere near Rotorua, so I stopped walking long enough to squint for a better look at the map and saw it was actually Lake Rotoroa – with an O not a U. Oh… ok cool.

On the way back I got to walk right past a large water tower that I have thought for many years I’d love to get a closer look at and the whole walk was much longer than an hour. Anyway it was a great walk and one I wouldn’t have managed to do if I didn’t bother to check out Google Maps on my phone – so thank you iPhone.