If You Go Down To The Woods Today

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After breakfast I suggested we take a walk in the reserve before we started our long drive. I'd imagined an interesting woodland walk and it turned out to be intetesting, but not quite for the reasons I'd imagined. The mild arachnophobia and herpetophobia of Ed and Cas was soon stimulated by all the curved vines, strange noises, dropping leaves and cobwebs strung across the pathway! Three of us were quite pleased to be out of the jungle. Tiger Lily Jones, who had been out wood guide and led us from the front throughout, seemed quite oblivious to the tension in the rear ranks.

We've travelled about two thirds of the way down the North Island and, given that we have about seven days left, we decided to start heading north again. It was our longest day of driving to date, about four hours, so with a cake stop and a lunch stop, it was about 4pm by the time we turned up in Ohakune. It reminded Cas and I of Avimore as it's a ski resort town. It's warm now, but in a few months it will be white with snow and chockablock with the ski crowd. There are good mountain bike trails around, so tomorrow we plan to see what we could do.
Unusually, the campsite had a jacuzzi in a private room. Cas and Hat went first and when I peeked around the door it looked like a Willy Wonker bubble machine had gone into overdrive. I switched with Cas whilst Hat dried herself off and I sent her roaring with laughing when the water pump gave me a fight by sucking in part of a bum cheek! Then Ed jumped in and we were all shiny and clean.

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