Blogging from A to Z April 2026 - Theme Reveal

 

During April I invite you to join me for an online tour of photos from my digital albums in the 2026 Blogging from A to Z April Challenge.

The A to Z April Challenge requires bloggers to post through the alphabet: 26 days, 26 letters, 26 posts starting with the theme of A on April 1st. As April has thirty days Sunday is designated as a day of rest. I won't be travelling during the month of April so I should be able to manage the challenge.

I enjoy this annual challenge for several reasons: it forces me to write and gives me an audience for my ponderings, it offers me opportunities to reflect on my activities, it connects me with a community of bloggers from around the world and it teaches me about other people's interests and cultures through the many April Challenge  posts they share.

As I travel the world I take many photos that pique my interest. During the year April 2025 to March 2026 our travels included visits to many islands large and small. My theme for 2026 Island Hopping will give precedence to Islands visited in the past year but for those difficult letters like X and Z I will dig into my photo archives for content.

This year for the first time I created in Canva a personalised banner of my posts that fits in with the theme of my blog. I also enlisted the help of ChatGPT to create a series of A to Z tiles for each day of the challenge. 

That's me

 I wrote a post about this over on my genealogy blog but I'm posting it here too as I was rather pleased with the result.

Created by me using ChatGPT

Two Months of Brain Food

My year of reading started off slowly as I was travelling on January and concentrating on enjoying and learning about the places we visited in Australia and New Zealand.

I have only signed up to one challenge, on Goodreads for 2026, where I have committed to reading 100 titles. 

In addition to the books listed below as read in January and February on GoodReads I read a fascinating history book that I purchased at a Museum bookshop in New Zealand. 

It was Founding Documents of Aotearoa New Zealand by Paul Moon. The publisher description states "The history of New Zealand is tracked through fifty key documents. Each document is explained and put into context, with illustrations." For this traveller who was ignorant about New Zealand's history that book was an excellent tutor. 

The remainder of the books I read were in the GoodReads database. I was rather generous in awarding five stars to four titles. They can be seen here https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2580847?shelf=read. 

Welcome to New Zealand

I was a bit lax in taking photos of Welcome Signs on our January journey. I'm sharing some (in no particular order) that I managed to snap while tootling around New Zealand. 

20 Something Snaps -Traipsing through the Trees

The Opua Kauri Walk we took this morning was definitely not a stroll but so worth the effort.

I had read a review that must have been written by someone younger and fitter than I. She didn't mention the slope, it was a challenge for this old girl. https://www.doc.govt.nz/.../paihi.../tracks/opua-kauri-walk/

We saw vegetation that ranged from teeny tiny plants to majestic Kauri Trees. It was a tranquil environment that provided several opportunities for my phone to have a workout and take some interesting Upclose snaps.

Enjoy.

Disinfectant Station

Dwarfed