Ross and Wyn Davies Travel Blog

Sunday was a catch-up day. Washing to do. Paper work to do. Motor home to clean – at least the side the birds had made a mess of back under the trees. It was a lovely day, sunny and warm in the sun but cooler in the shade. It had been cold first thing – only 7 degrees. It warmed to 15 degrees through the day. People are saying how cold it has been up here this winter although ‘cold’ is a relative term for us from down south. Continue reading →

Sunday 19^th was a bit of a catch-up day. After a lovely late start we did some washing, using our washing machine, rinsing in the camp laundry tub and spinning in our machine again. At only one sheet washing at a time it takes a while, but we have a while. We even managed to get them dry between showers. After a late lunch we went for a bike ride along the beach. Continue reading →

Saturday 18th started very early – about 12:30am when strong winds arrived from the south-west. We were all woken by the noise and rocking as the winds buffeted the camp and Suzi. We were under trees and small bits of branch were hitting our roof. They sounded bigger than they were but we wondered how secure the trees were. I had to go out to secure a plastic tarpaulin over our bikes that was whipping noisily in what was a gale, and was happy to get back inside out of the wind.  Continue reading →

Thursday was a day of mooching around. There were a few showers of rain and Wyn got her bike going for a ride around Ahipara. And we got ready for the trip to the Kerikeri airport the next day to get Laura to her plane.

Friday dawned overcast with occasional showers. I was keen to take the long way to the airport. We had to be there by 5pm, and had some time to explore down the West Coast. We were away in the car by 11am and headed south from Ahipara on the Twin Coast Discovery Highway. Continue reading →

After heavy overnight rain we woke to sun on Wednesday. And it was warm enough, around 16 degrees.  Wyn went for a walk on the beach. Laura got her guitar out and later did some art work. I wrote up a couple of days travels, and the wireless time we had bought ran out before I could upload it. 50Mb doesn’t seem to go far these days. The day became progressively more overcast. We decided to move sites, being under a tree when it is raining is a bit noisy. Continue reading →

We woke early to the sound of the birds, and troubled by thinking about how best to get our troubles sorted. It was a lovely calm clear morning, and I decided it was too early to start worrying so I went for a walk in search of 90 Mile Beach. It was supposed to be 800m away. It was easy enough to tell which direction, it was a quiet morning apart from the birds and the breakers. I found a road down to the beach, expecting a car park at the end. To my surprise there was no car park – the road just went straight out onto the beach. Continue reading →

Monday turned out to be one of those days where things went wrong and just kept getting worse. It was the 13^th of July but let’s not get suspicious about things. It dawned a lovely sunny morning – time to be moving on from our RV park in the bush behind Paihia. There were a few things to be dried out first, like mats that had been outside. And water tanks to top up and blogs to update. We decided to head first to the dump station at Kerikeri to get rid of the grey waste. Plus there was the car to hitch up. It was the middle of the day before we were ready; the last thing was to check the lights on the car were working off the connection to Suzi. Nothing! Continue reading →

Today (Monday) the sun is shining and we are drying out and packing up. We’ll head north – there’s still some more north left here. We’re aiming for Kaitaia, more or less. We’ll probably head for Ahipara, either there or Maitai Bay. We’ll see where the road takes us.

We woke on Sunday around 7.30am and realised we had survived the storm and had a reasonably good night’s sleep. Mind you, we were fairly confident we’d be okay as we were in a sheltered spot and on high ground and it didn’t seem as severe where we were as they had forecasted.

It was still raining but not nearly as heavy. Laura was keen to go to the Farmers Market at Kerikeri and so we set off midmorning. Continue reading →

I’ve been gradually adding photos to some of the recent posts. And have added a Latest Pics tab with thumbnails of a bunch of recent photos. It would have been good if I could have figured out how to show captions under them, but somehow in the upgrade of this feature they made it much harder to do so. Meanwhile, if you hover your mouse over any of the photos it should give you a couple of words on what they are of. If you click on any photo on the photo pages or within the posts you’ll get a larger version.

Pottering Around Paihia
Thursday had been a busy day, so we had a lazy morning on Friday. There was a storm brewing, promising rain and wind, and we decided to stay put at Paihia at our RV Park. We were away from the coast by a couple of kilometres, and had power. On Friday afternoon we decided an outing was called for, so went out. We were near Haruru Falls, but couldn’t find them. I’d seen that we could drive to them from Waitangi so we drove around via there. Continue reading →

We woke yesterday to blue skies and sunshine. It was cold for a start at 10 degrees, but it was going to be a better day. I was up early and found a spot under the bed/stairs to work on catching up the blog. Laura was asleep in the lounge – it had been a long day on Wednesday. The weather forecast ahead is not good for the weekend, so we decided to make the most of the day. We wanted a nice day to walk around Russell and figured this was our chance. Continue reading →

We were up on Wednesday at 7.30am and turned on the TV to catch the news. Instead we got the end of the memorial service for Michael Jackson. We weren’t fans, but it was a moment to be a part of. I’d had a glimpse of his world-wide status when in Singapore in 1988. We’d been at the zoo when he arrived as it was closing for a private viewing. I’ll always remember everyone’s excitement – it was hard to imagine who might have created more – not the Pope or the Queen for starters. We stayed to watch his entourage of minivans drive by with the curtains pulled – somehow it was exciting to know he’d driven by a couple of metres away. Now he’s dead and it looked like a nice memorial service. It wasn’t long before I had a text from my daughter Laura passing through Wellington airport. Continue reading →

We woke on Monday morning to the sound of the sea. And to our view of the sea. We lay in bed and watched the sun rise across Otamure Beach. Our bedroom/luton window gave us a grandstand view. It is a wonderful location, and we’ll have to go back sometime when we have more time to do nothing. After breakfast we went for a walk along the beach and around the headland to the next beach – the one of the photo used by DOC to show the camp. Later we chatted with our neighbours and the morning passed. We were moving on, but reluctantly. Continue reading →

Woops, somewhere Sunday 5th July went missing. We had one, but somehow skipped mentioning it on this blog. In all the excitement of catching up it got dropped off. (So this got slipped into position later.) This was the day we woke up at Uretiti Beach DOC camp and went to sleep at Otamure Beach DOC camp. We were up early at Uretiti and off down the beach to watch the sun rise. Continue reading →