Up into Northland

Short and sweet this entry will be, we did the doctor thing and that was all fine – B will be approached by a knife on the 7^th May to ‘deal with’ both his left shoulder and right hand! He was also given the once over over the rest of his body, and there is nothing else that needs looking at or keeping an eye on, so that’s good news. The bad news is we missed a call this morning saying if we could be at the clinic he had a cancellation for 13.15. Doris the sat nav said 13.54 so sadly we missed that! Oh well, it’ll give us time to enjoy Northland, and then 10 days or so to either go back to Tongariro or go to Gisborne, the long and rugged way round!

We stopped with Robyn and Murray for a cuppa on our way past, and came away with the van groaning under the weight of fruit and cake, we really are having healthy breakfasts, peanut butter on toast to keep us going, then a combination of apple (picked from the roadside, though B did end up slithering about in rotten apple and says he’s never stopping again), pear (from the garden of the house we looked at), feijoa (from the garden, from the drive of the ‘quirky’ camp or from Robyn), passion fruit (from Robyn), kiwi fruit (Robyn) and banana (supermarket!) We can also confirm that pureed feijoa with custard makes a very acceptable pudding! (Feijoa are small hard skinned fruit that you eat the centre of with a spoon, vaguely reminiscent of pear, but not really like anything else!)

Something else for Robyn and Murray after mentioning "7 drunken nights" once or twice when we were with them, after we left them the first time, as we were walking past the Irish Bar at 11.15am in Whakatane, we had to stop and sing along to ...... 7 drunken nights! we did get some funny looks!

The 3km long beach at Orewa

We are now at Orewa so haven’t really made it very far, but the cake was calling so we had to stop! Plus we needed to get over the shock of $46 at last nights campsite in Miranda!

We’ve just had a call from John, and fingers crossed, his offer has been accepted on a house in Napier, sounds great, and even has a swimming pool for cats! (A hot tub to anyone but me!) We’ll just have to have another trip out here to give it the once over when he’s moved in!