It is Always Good to Get a Gold Award

By Brian Megaw | February 16, 2023

It is Always Good to Get a Gold Award What’s Qualmark? That was a comment from one of our more senior guides at a recent guides meeting where I mentioned that we had recently been assessed to Qualmark Gold under Qualmark’s Enviro awards. While we are delighted, of course, to have been assessed to this [...]

To Take That Photo or Not?

By Brian Megaw | February 9, 2023

To Take That Photo or Not? Over the last few years, farming and farmers have taken a bad rap. Most of this bad rap has been driven by the impact farming practices have on the environment. These impacts range from methane emissions from bovine animals, cattle in particular, contributing to global climate change, to the [...]

Unprecedented Summer River Flows mean Great Rafting

By Brian Megaw | January 22, 2023

Unprecedented Summer River Flows mean Great Rafting A typical summer rafting season on an undammed free flowing North Island, New Zealand river such as our home river, the Rangitikei, works something like this. Spring – September to mid-November – plenty of water, but overall, river flows tend to taper off by late November, but even [...]

Is This a Summer Like No Other?

By Brian Megaw | January 11, 2023

Is This a Summer Like No Other? Day after day, a cloud barrier sits atop the Ruahine Ranges, a low mountain range east of River Valley Lodge. Most of the time, the rain associated with this cloud bank does not reach as far as Pukeokahu, the farming district where River Valley is situated. This is [...]

Flight of the Kiwi

By Brian Megaw | January 1, 2023

Flight of the Kiwi The Kiwi, the native bird used as a symbol of Aotearoa/New Zealand, cannot fly. It lost the use of its wings millions of years ago as it adapted to the unique conditions it found on this isolated landmass. And yet I saw 10 Kiwi fly. This occasion happened at an event [...]

40 Years On

By Brian Megaw | November 8, 2022

40 Years On Last month, 6th of October 2022, an unremarked and uncelebrated birthday passed quietly. There was no celebration, no party, but it was significant for all that. On the 6th of October 1982, River Valley Ventures Ltd was incorporated as a company. Generally, when we talk about the history of River Valley, we [...]

Ripples In A Pond

By Brian Megaw | October 13, 2022

Ripples in a Pond “All my reporting life, I have thrown small pebbles into a very large pond, and have no way of knowing whether any pebble caused the slightest ripple. I don’t need to worry about that. My responsibility was the effort.” Martha Gellhorn, Journalist, b.1908, d. 1998 I recently came across this quote [...]

A Day in the Life of a Trap Checker

By Brian Megaw | October 6, 2022

A Day in the Life of a Trap Checker For millennia, the islands of Aotearoa/New Zealand were separated from other land masses. This isolation led our endemic species (species found here and nowhere else) to evolve to occupy all the available niches in this pre-human landscape. Unfortunately, this evolution and specialisation made them incredibly vulnerable [...]

Confessions of a Review Addict

By Brian Megaw | September 17, 2022

Confessions of a Review Addict Coming back from feeding out lucerne bailage to the horses, which happens daily over the winter and early Spring here at River Valley, I stopped by the mailbox and checked for any mail. Amongst the various items in the mail was a big green A4 envelope. Boldy printed on the [...]

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