We live with our Grandma and Gramps on Normandale Road and walk or scooter to school every day. Sometimes when it’s raining, Grandma likes to take the car but we try and talk her out of it because we don’t mind walking in the rain.
Our journey to school is very special. First we carefully walk down our steep concrete drive which can get quite slippery.
The other day Grandma slipped over but we just pulled her up and brushed her off.
If we are on our scooters we go down Normandale Road. Grandma has to run behind us to keep up because we go pretty fast down the hill. If we walk, we take a special route through the bush, down a sweeping driveway. Grandma tells us that we’ve got to keep to the outside of the curves so that any cars coming can see us.
The driveway is awesome with lots of big native trees and other trees that lose their leaves during the winter. Some of the trees have lots of big flowers. Grandma calls them rhododendrons.
We see lots of birds on our journey to school. Tui play in the kowhai trees and dart around like crazy. They look very cool with shiny black/blue feathers and white tufts under their beaks. There are also lots of Kereru. They are soooo big and make a loud whoosh whoosh sound when they fly above us, sometimes giving us a bit of a fright.
When we get to the bottom of the driveway we walk down some steep steps through the bush. There are big huge pine trees that leave lots of pine needles down the track and sometimes we find pine cones which we put in our bags. Some trees have funny leaves that are green on the top side and white on the back side. We call them toilet paper leaves. Grandma says they are rangiora leaves. Half way down the steps there is a funny imprint in the concrete. We think it must be a dinosaur footprint. Grandma said there were no dinosaurs around when she was a little girl so the footprint must be really old.
After the steps we climb up the bank and then walk across Normandale Bridge. Halfway along the bridge there is a ramp which we walk down to get to Parliament Street. The railway line is really close to Parliament Street and it is cool if a train goes past when we are there.
Once we get to the corner we need to cross Bridge Street and Leary Street. Grandma makes us stop and look every way in case cars are coming.
Sometimes Grandma lets us walk by ourselves down Railway Road. We feel very grown up. We go past lots of car sales yards until we get to the new crossing. We used to fight over who would push the button at the crossing but now we know that stepping on the bubbly pads at the crossing is the same as pushing the button. We usually see lots of friends at the crossing and we walk with them into school and wave to Grandma if she is still at the corner.
Walking to school is cool fun.
Written by Grandma McPhee on behalf of Aroha Nepia, Room 4, and Tawhara Nepia, Room 8, Hutt Central School.
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