An early start for us which was not too bad as we both awoke
around 07.30 and so a light breakfast in the room and a shower and pack up the
small amount of bags left after yesterday big pack of the car.
We headed south on route one in the direction of
Hamilton but stopped about 30 minutes later to come of the motorway and visit friends
of Brian & Sheila who were holding some camping gear to await our arrival.
So a quick repack of the car and after a cup of tea and a good chat we departed
south again. We have been lent a SATNAV which we can use not only for the road
structure but mostly for finding petrol stations and places of interest, Route
one took to Hamilton which we skirted around the west side and continued south
until reaching route 4 which takes you on a gorgeous drive through mountains
and hills bypassing the odd volcano and also quite a lot of cows and sheep and
the odd Llama, yes a Llama.
We did notice the odd dead sheep by the side of the
road but decided there was no room in the car. We stopped for lunch at a place
called the Big Apple in Waitomo and the food we had was very good. Jennifer had
a venison burger and noel a fish burger; we felt the extra calories would keep
us awake. Duly refreshed we headed off at about 13.00 again through more
mountains and bypassing large rivers and this really was a great drive. We also
stopped for about fifteen minutes to give us both a break and a quick ten minutes
shut eye before continuing to Wanganui where we arrived as the Sienna Motor
Lodge at around 16.40.
The lodge is quite nice and an easy location for
shopping and we walked across the road to the New World Supermarket and
purchased some chicken quarters, and ham and a Caesar Salad and a nice bottle
of Chardonnay plus some egg and bacon for breakfast all for a lot less then
eating out but now we have enough food for a couple of days.
The sun is shining outside and it is quite warm whilst
Noel sits here blogging and the Missus is out at the washing machine with a bag
of clothes to deal with. We have been looking at the web news with trepidation
in view of the flooding news which continues with news that Chertsey has
flooded, the River Wey looks low at the moment but perhaps they have lowered it
anticipating some higher flows elsewhere.
Anyway there is nothing we can do except hope.
Tomorrow we leave for Wellington and the cross the
Cooks Straights en route to a night in Blenheim. Let’s hope the weather stays
good.
