Onwards...

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230km from Hamilton lies New Plymouth. We had breakfast in Hamilton and checked out the shops, it is quite a large city compared to Whangarei (a city here is wot we would call a town in the UK, a town here is maybe wot we call a hamlet (not the cigar but the collection of a few houses) often without an obvious pub!).
Drove onwards to Otorohanga, which is built around the fact it has a Kiwi house, seriously, everything in the town makes reference to this fact and there are giant statues of Kiwi going in and out of the town, its like some huge alter to a giant Kiwi god. Anyhoo, watched them feed Kiwis, they is mental birds innit... One was doing flying kicks at the keeper of kiwis, landing some serious blows to her "gum boots". The other one was much friendlyer, and the keeper of kiwis patted it like a small puppy, ahhhhh...
Walked around the park bit where they had more animals, including Leopard Gekos like mine, except in a bigger cooler tank with cacti innit. After all the birds etc drove onwards, stopping a the

White Cliffs Brewery

.
This place was hilarious, preceding it on the road was a latge CAMRA banner sying it sold real ale. Parked up ad this old hairy bearded dude with one leg hobbled out of some out building and ushered us in. Seriously, he only had one leg! Not even a prosthetic leg, but a proper jake the peg cum blackbeard stylee stump! All he needed was an eye patch and a parrot, hmm maybe he could colaborate with the bird fancying motel dude from last week?
Anyway couldn't really drink the beer cause was driving, but had a taste. they do a mild and a larger. the Mild was yummy, larger OK. The actualy brewing dude wasn't there so didn't get and proper answers to my questions such as "What hops do you use?" Bought 4 mild and headed off. Amy yelled at me and said I was sad cause I signed the visitor book

Rob + Amy, North London CAMRA.

Arrived in New Plymouth. No one told us there was a cycle race on and the place was all booked out, so had to drive about 20km out of town where we stayed in a classy 70's stylee hotel/pub. Was like something straight out of Croc Dundee!
We had a few drinks there before bed, when they closed the front bar (we were the only ones there) we went through to the public bar, which resembled a youth club, in both clientel and the fact it resembled somesort of village hall/scout hut/Phoenix club. ("There is a horse in my cabaret suite.") Only with our the horse, or cabaret suite for that matter.
Did I mention the beer was 1 pound sterling per handle (big glass, but still smaller than a pint). Or that there were xmas fairy lights all over the front of the hotel despite being 22c outside?

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Photos

Amy loves the Kiwi
Ahhhhhh... Patting the fake oversize Kiwi.

A real Kiwi
OK a bit blury, but real none the less

The Brewery!!!
Need I say more?

Waterfront in New Plymouth
Arty eh?

Waterfront in New Plymouth
Arty eh?

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