Welcome Home Tracey!

Daughter Tracey was here from her home in Surrey for a few weeks so we headed for Auckland to meet her off the plane. First stop was at a friends place in Taupo where we parked Gypsy Rover on the vacant section next door. After a wonderful evening with David and Lyn we drove north to Lake Karapiro and freedom camped at Horohoro Domain for the night.

Great accommodation and a lovely hot meal and showers in Taupo.

Horohoro Domain, a great place to freedom camp.

The next morning after a wake up call from fellow members of the NZMCA (New Zealand Motor Caravan Association) who were having a church service we were off in the direction of Auckland.  Our planned stop was to be Ardmore Airport before picking up Tracey on Sunday morning.  We were expected at my sister Mary and Tony’s home for lunch arriving just nicely at 12.30pm.  We had a lot to catch up on as Tracey was last here in 2011.  Unable to park anywhere close to Mary and Tony’s for the night our plan was to head back to Ardmore.  But plans are made to change and at 9pm we pulled into Pullman Park in Papakura to freedom park for the night.

Next morning we were off to Ngongotaha before the short trip to Waikite Valley Hot Pools the next morning. Tracey had originally requested Opal Hot Springs in Matamata where we had spent many happy holidays while the children were growing up.  But after the great reviews on the internet our plans were to go to Waikite Valley instead as we would be passing close by on our way to Taupo.

First in this morning, no parks available later in the day.

Lovely clean and enticing hot pools.

Shade available when needed.

Extensive hot pools set amongst the native bush.

Temperature in the vicinity of 98 degree here.

Lovely relaxing soak pool.

Next stop Lava Glass and Aratiatia Rapids.

Edinburgh Military Tattoo! Wellington Westpac Stadium.

As far as I was concerned this was a must see.  We had seen the original tattoo at Edinburgh Castle in 1995.

Known as the "greatest show on earth, Scotland's Military Tattoo has a 65 year history.  Coming to Wellington for an exclusive New Zealand performance how could we miss it.

Queuing already at 6pm show doesn't open until 8.30pm.Great seats in front of the ‘castle’

Our original plan was to take ‘Gypsy Rover’ down to Ngatitoa Domain and make a weekend of it and catch the train in. We are glad we didn’t as there were Motorhomes and Caravans everywhere as people had travelled from near and far all looking for somewhere to park.

We drove to Paraparaumu and left our car at our friends and travelled in by train together. Getting home at 2am was a bit hard at our age though.

Maori welcome to Hon Bill English, Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand.Combined Bands.Looks like the real thing. Maori Welcome.NZ Army Band.

Performances from Top Secret (Switzerland), Royal Marine Band, Royal Air Force Band, Welsh Guards Army Band, The Republic of Fiji Military Forces Band, HM The King of Norway’s Guards Band and Drill Team, New Zealand Army Band, Auckland Police Pipe Band, and the internationally renowned Wellington’s Lochiel Marching Team.

Who would know it was a mockup castle?1200 participants! New Zealand Champion Lochiel Marching Team in front.

Only four fantastic performances the last one is tonight, the show has now become the  most popular Wellington Show of all time. Congratulations Wellington.

Lets go to South Wairarapa!

Last weekend we had a club rally near Martinborough.  Several of us decided to take a couple of days extra and take a look around.

A great POP behind the Fell Museum in Featherston.Not sure I like these roads too much.Cape Palliser Lighthouse, yes (some of us )climbed the 234 steps.Seals on the beach at Ngawi.We even did some freedom camping on the south coast.Time for an ice cream.Hanging over the edge with the sea eroding the cliffs.Scary cliff faces.What can you see?That’s the best we could get, they did how wonderful sunsets and we missed it.Club picnic on the beach at Lake Ferry.Lake Ferry looking out to the south.Christening the new BBQ.

We had a wonderful weekend and even got back to the old kite flying.  Haven’t done that for a long time. Another few weeks and we are rallying on a farm. Now that will be interesting.

3D Jigsaws at the Coach House Museum Feilding.

We were not going too far from home this Christmas so only spent a week away in Gypsy Rover nearby.  We plan to travel further afield in March.

A couple of days at the drop in Rally at Foxton before heading for Marton and Fielding in the new year.

Staying at the Coach House Museum we had to visit the “Toys of Yesteryear “Exhibition.  I had never seen 3D jigsaws and was absolutely fascinated with them.

The railway was the first to take Dereks eye.A lovely English Cottage.Tower Bridge in London.Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.Buckingham Palance in London.The Eiffel Tower in Paris.Bavarian Clock Tower.And of course Big Ben in London.

I will have to look out for some of my own.  The selection was For Sale if anyone has a spare room or two.

Happy New Year to you all

We wish all our readers a wonderful New Year, we hope you had a very Merry Christmas. 

Please forgive the lack of posts all due to a virus hacker on the computer.  I am very careful (or so I thought) with everything I open on the computer, I have even been known to yell to the other half “Don’t open it!”

Somehow or other my computer has been compromised by “Coldsearch.com” Beware of this virus,

I have done a lot of researching and trying to delete it but so far to no avail.  Hopefully I have managed to bypass it at the moment. This is a nasty browser hack which apparently gets worse with time.

Roll on the weekend and hopefully my computer wizz son will be able to make the necessary changes to the registry.

Normal service will resume shortly. (we hope).

Gotcha for once!

Surprise, surprise who’s 70 then?

Derek had ideas of quietly having a birthday and nobody knowing. I had other ideas and together with Sandra we had been scheming for weeks. Invitations were sent out via email with the venue at Sandra and Dons home.

On arrival Jenny caught the surprised look on Derek’s face.

Sandra had invited us for dinner and Derek thought nothing of the invitation although 6pm would have been later than usual.  I opted to travel on an alternative route with an excuse I wanted to check out a future rally venue.  I knew that if we travelled straight there Derek would see all the caravans on the front lawn and would smell a rat immediately. 

Sandra explaining how she first met Derek 21 years ago.

It took a while for it to sink in with friends from the Caravan club and Menzshed already there. I don’t think I have ever seen him so stuck for words.  But he soon settled down and we had a great evening.

Cutting the cake.

Out with the old!

New Zealand Reserve Bank is gradually issuing new banknotes. There are slight differences but more security issues built in.