Whiskers

All good things come to an end,or so a famous saying goes.And the 50th Anniversary Tour of the Top of the South Island is no different. We awoke to a rather overcast day in Christchurch with a cool autumnal feel about the weather. However before we arose to get the day underway our minds went to our next holiday in 2024 and hopefully a resurrection of the postponed BBA of 2020 when we had planned to travel again to Europe taking in islands of the Mediterranean,mainland Europe and Great Britain and Ireland.Now that COVID around the world seems to be becoming an illness that if you catch it, you mostly get over it relatively quickly,and you can protect yourself by being vaccinated and as countries open their borders to traveller's that we might just be able ... read more

It is always sad when a holiday one has thoroughly enjoyed and with such magnificent weather (well in most places) has that feeling of coming to an end. Even though we are now both retired from paid work it would be stretching things to simply carry on and in any case it will also be nice to get back to our own bed again, not that most of our accommodation hasn’t provided a good nights sleep. And then of course there is Barney the Bunny who has been staying with his breeder while we have been away from home and we both miss him and the grandkids too very much. The West Coast weather has been absolutely fabulous and again this morning the sun is warm as we pack up the Corolla for the short run ... read more

Gosh, have we been so lucky on this holiday as except for the overcast days in Golden Bay it has virtually been sunny every day and we are now well into week 3 of the trip. You would think that with the sun shining the way it is outside that we would be up and about early and getting in a couple of planned forest walks. But with everything we wanted to do close by we indulged with a little bit more of bed time with the curtains pulled open of course so we could enjoy all that sunshine. With breakfast eventually out of the way and the motel proprietor taking over the clothes washing duties using their household machine as the motel one needed fixing, we set off north up SH67 prepared for a few ... read more

A tremendous thunderstorm overnight with all the elements going at once has partially cleared the overcast sky but it still wasn’t brilliantly fine as we surfaced for the day. Still at least that rain had come during the night and not while we would have been hoping to take in more sights around Takaka during the daylight. We planned a casual day with a short amount of driving locally and then finish the day with dinner at the River Inn, a real old Kiwi style pub, which we had passed by several times over the past few days. Taking our time during the morning we left the apartment late morning and headed first down to Paton’s Rock another of the numerous seaside settlements that surround Takaka. The place looked deserted and although there were a good ... read more

C&M were heading back to Richmond today and we are moving to a slightly smaller Air BnB closer to Takaka for a further three nights. With breakfast finished C&M said their goodbyes after packing their car in the light rain falling. We are hopeful that the rain isn’t an omen of what is predicted in the Bay of Plenty and Gisborne areas as the weather system there appears somehow to be connected to the overcast skies here in Golden Bay. We had a bit more time up our sleeves so were able to casually pack our luggage into the Corolla at a leisurely pace and then headed a short distance north to Pakawau where we turned left and headed towards the west coast. The road was sealed for a couple of kilometres but we knew this ... read more