Ross and Wyn Davies Travel Blog

Saturday 9 May
We’d been hoping to go tramping this weekend with my friend Peter from Rotorua. But it was not to be, with me having slipped in the rain in the supermarket carpark a couple of weeks before and straining something in my nether regions. However, Peter was after some help storing and repositioning his car. So it was up earlyish on Saturday, with Peter arriving at 9.15am with two others from the Rotorua Tramping Club. I went with them in Peter’s car to where they were starting out in the Kaimais – this was the same road Wyn had walked to the end of the previous week. I brought their car back to the packhouse, to drop it off at a different road end the next day. Continue reading →

Sunday 3 May
Sundays are optional work days at the packhouse. If there is work, people can elect to work or not. We tend to volunteer to make up for the hours we miss through the week. So it was with this Sunday. We worked from 7.30am to 5.30pm. Getting up early is a bit of a shock. The compensation is finishing at 5.30pm and having a normal sort of evening. Continue reading →

Friday 1st May
This was another day with no work. I was on a roll with my paperwork. It piles up just as much on the road as anywhere else, even though we do as much as we can via the internet. And there’s still loose ends to tidy up. Wyn had books to send back to owners and letters to write. She biked into town and back to do the posting, and biked a short way along a bird walk by the river. Continue reading →

Tuesday 28th
This was a sleep-in morning, to after 10am. It was still raining occasionally. Wyn got a couple of loads of towels through the wash, and even got them drier on the line. We rigged up a bit of a line under the awning so that they could continue to dry in the rain. I made runny fish pie/sauce for lunch – the smoked fish was smelling out the fridge. Then it was off to work for our evening shift, with cleaning afterwards. Continue reading →

Tuesday 21 April
The weather wasn’t much better. So another day passed. Mooching around. Working. Watching TV. Eating. Texting. Surfing the net. Listening to music. Reading. Eating. There’s worse things. This may have been the day Laura sat outside in the sun reading. So maybe the weather was better sometimes. Continue reading →

Saturday 18 April
With our usual weekend off, we headed off from the packhouse for a change of scene. We took both Suzi and the car – it seemed easier that way. We went a few kms northwest towards Waihi, and turned off to Bowentown. There is a great camping ground there at the far end of the beach. Continue reading →

Thursday April 16th
This was a special day, my two younger children were arriving to stay for a while. Unfortunately it also seemed to be the end of the golden weather. We’d had a great run for a long time, and it had to come to an end sometime. The kids were flying in, so we emptied the car out – it sometimes doubles as a storage shed! We got over to the Tauranga airport in plenty of time, and were quite excited by the time their plane came in. Continue reading →

After our 6 hours of work the previous day, we had another day off. It wasn’t that we were worn out, it was my birthday. We decided that it’d be nice to not have to work for this birthday, so we didn’t. First there was a cup of tea in bed. And then very yummy pancakes and real fruit salad for breakfast. Continue reading →

Easter Saturday
This was a lovely warm and sunny day. In the later part of the morning we took Suzi into Tauranga. We headed for the boat ramp area beside the port. There was a sea of parked 4-wheel drives with huge trailers, with a couple of motorhomes skulking amongst them. Over the back were enormous towers of containers, some 6-high. Motorhomes are tolerated in the boat park. We chatted to a couple in a small bus who were fairly determined freedom campers. We had some lunch and then walked back to the centre of the city, only a couple of kms away. Continue reading →

Easter Friday 10 April
I learned that the Easter bunny doesn’t hop by until Easter Sunday. But luckily Easter Friday is hot cross bun day. So today was hot cross buns for breakfast. The morning was time to catch up on the blog, we’d gotten behind – which seems to be a bit of a common thing. There was no work on over Easter, so it was a chance to relax and unwind. Continue reading →

We needed to get a few things sorted with Suzi, so arranged a visit to Country Caravans who are Traillite agents. This meant a trip through Tauranga which looked a bit complicated – and our map was outdated. This was a job for Nev the Nav, and we gave him his head. It was chaos approaching the harbour bridge. Continue reading →

I think I’ve managed to turn comments off. It’s a shame to have to try to do this, blogs are supposed to be interactive. But I’m now getting so much spam comment stuff – running at about 30 per day. All needing moderation and deletion. And some of it is hair-curling stuff. Just reading the descriptions seems unclean. And only about 1 comment in 200 has been legitimate and appropriate. So I’m trying to turn the whole comment process off, in the hope of getting free of it all.