A Blogger in Black

Friday 22 December 2023 Welcome back. Sandra is opening the batting on this one: Today was the first of two travel days to get us nearer to Wellington where we are due to spend Christmas and three nights at the same motel.   We left Rotorura in good time and, like further north, headed west towards the coast, figuring we might as well use the coastal road and see some sights.   Our first night stop was in the town of New Plymouth.   We were to learn that this area is in one of the first regions settled by the English in the middle to late 18 th Century – we were to encounter many familiar names of places, streets etc.   It certainly had an older feel to the buildings etc. than say Rotorura. Before we left Rotorua we had to juice up the Elantra – again. We’re clocking up the miles – sorry, K’s – and even a modern 2 litre petrol auto likes to sup the juice. We have something in common when it comes to thirstiness. Anyway, Rotorua was one of the cheapest ...

Monday 18 th December A reasonable night’s sleep for me, aside from the usual early hours visit to attend to the plumbing but I was awake early and decided not to waste the time, so made a cuppa and got started on the next part of the blog. It was still dark out but as dawn came – bless her – a heavy mist was apparent. Given the forecast for a warm sunny day I reckoned it would burn off, and so it proved. Within 20 minutes it had gone. After a long drive, the day before I was looking forward to staying local, and the Bay of Islands Vintage Railway was ideal. Sandra takes up the narrative: As many of you already know, it is something of a ‘thing’ for Richard and I and so we decided to pay it a visit that morning.   A short 15 minute drive brought us to the railway station and it was full of customers tucking into chips at 10am in the morning!!   We duly bought our tickets, had a quick look round about and photos were taken.   We had a little time to wait, so a cof...