ONWARD!

I'm now back on North Island.

Monday night was spent at a BnB on the way to Picton - Miles off the beaten track, with views to die for across one of the many arms of Marlborough Sounds. The ferry crossing on Tuesday was calm and sunny - I even spent quite a lot of it sitting on the deck - despite the wind.

The Wind!!! Wellington is not known as the windy city in jest: The majority of my 350km drive from Welly to Napier was spent battling the buffetting side winds. The coutryside was nothing terribly spectacular: the usual green-clad mountains giving way to some very curveaceous, bosomy hills.

Oh, and for part of the journey I was following a house... Yes, you DID read that correctly: a whole house was being transported on the back of a lorry. It took up both lanes of the ighway and every time it went over a bridge the lorry's hydaulics tipped over to one side so it would clear the edge of the bridge. The locals are obviously used to his sort of thing and just pull over onto the verges until it's passed, but I kept getting the giggles - it was such a bizzarre experience.
Lovely homestay in the hill above Napier, overlooking the port. Spent yesterday out picking grapes with mine host and some of his freinds. Thoroughly enjoyable experience. I now understand why so many of my friends who've done this sort of stuff YEARS ago always speak about it fondly!

However, today it's damp and drizzly and I've just been pottering about the coast in the car. And wandering around Napier - an attractive, 1920s town.


So, tomorrow I'll be heading off to Gisborne and the East Coast, then it'll be Rotorua, Coromandel, and on up north...