NZ +14: Ever Northwards

This morning, we were all woken shortly after 7.00! Admittedly with a cup of tea, but Robin and Maureen certainly had no intention of letting us miss any time in Pukerua Bay before we left for New Plymouth!

In fact, it was only about 8.30 when we were donning our walking shoes for a bracing walk down the hill to the beach. This, as it turned out, was down a sheer hill, the path twisting and hairpinning down at very precarious angles. It was only half way down, when were cursing the dangerous nature of the path and wondering what it must be like in icy conditions, that we met Maureen's friend, Sally, coming up the hill! Maureen's friend, Sally, and her guide dog, Vogue. It was then we stopped moaning about our totally sighted descent...

Anyway, I did take photos of the bay and the island out in the bay, but we're now in an internet cafe in New Plymouth, and I forgot to ask the techie guy to put those ones on the system from the card reader, so you'll have to get them another day.

In the meantime, you will have to make do with a couple of the town we're in now.

How can I describe New Plymouth? Well, it has rather too many branches of Cash Converters and not enough branches of Waitrose. That will have to suffice, as New Plymouthians may be looking over my shoulder, either technologically or actually, and I don't want to offend any of them.

Here are some highlights...

These are interesting rocks on the beach...



...and this is a very tall lamp post when bends in the winds haring in off the Tasman Sea...



...and this is the shopping centre...



I am probably making the whole place sound much more exciting than it actually is.

Anyway, there will be a possible excitement later, when we drive up to Wallath Road and see if my friends Gill and Andy are in. They don't know I might be turning up on their doorstep because I don't have their phone number, it's not in the book and I obviously have their email address wrong because everytime I try to send them one it bounces back. Maybe they are trying to tell me something...

Gill and Andy are friends from college who came out here a couple of years ago.

I met Gill in the first few weeks of college and we were the only people who seemed to think that Robin of Sherwood was any good and (I realise this will only make sense to college people) we used to get the key to Room 12 lecture theatre off Chris Rose at reception and watch it on the big screen in there, taking snacks with us as if it were the cinema. It was all filmed in the West Country, and that is where Gill is from, so when the outlaws were in a deep, dark bit of Sherwood Forest, she would say "Oh, that's near Farrington Gurney" and the whole illusion was spoilt...

And Andy, well Andy broke my leg in three places.

If they are in, the next post will have a picture.

Of them, not of my leg.

Oh, by the way, this is where we are staying:




PS. Well done to Paul for surviving another interminable Fantasy Football Evening! I had a very good excuse not to be at this one, although I did make my presence felt with a phone call!