We had a lovely day at Ambury Park on Tuesday. It was a fine calm morning and soon warmed up. Wyn tackled some washing and with a breeze in the afternoon it was a good drying day. Andrew was flying out in the evening so there was some packing up to be done. At noon we wandered down to “watch” the lamb feeding and soon all three of us had a bottle and a vigorously hungry lamb trying to suck it inside out. Ambury is a working farm that gives a lot of Aucklanders some idea of what happens on a farm. There is a small milking shed that is used each day as well. We had a walk around the harbour edge in the afternoon.
Later in the afternoon my cousin Peter called over for a cup of tea and chat and then it was time to get Andrew off to the airport. It was only about 9 kms away and no trouble to get to. The uncovered carpark had a sign warning of maximum height of 2.2m and luckily I remembered Wyn’s bike on the roof of the car before we hit the sign. There was time to stop and take the bike off the roof and put it on the bike rack on the back where my bike was. We had plenty of time for the airport formalities which was lucky because Andrew’s guitar case was first excess baggage and then oversize which required several counters to get sorted. It wasn’t long before Andrew was off through security and headed for his plane. We all had a bit of a moment when he had to go; it’d been wonderful having him with us for a couple of weeks and seeing his progress since he’d been with up back in April. Soon he was in the air zooming south and we were back making tea in Suzi in the middle of our paddock. But not before we got the shock of an $8 fee for parking for less than an hour in the airport carpark. That’s more like the Auckland we expect. Oh yes and it turned out that the only obstacle anywhere near 2.2m in the car park was the sign/barrier warning of the 2.2m height restriction.