End Mileage: 174083

Start Mileage: 173932

Distance Travelled: 259

Left the campsite at 8:30am, we’d gotten up just before 8am and had a morning coffee and packed up so we could do the killer hills before the day got too hot.

Got to Bay View at 10am and we stopped in to see Sue and Craig briefly. Hannah and Sophie were in good form, Rosalie and Robert were there too so good to catch up with them. They’d had a big family Christmas with most of the Maxted crew there from the sounds of things.

Left there at 11:30am and after a brief discussion (another “Shall we?”, “Ohhh OK then”) went back to Crab Farm. Got two more cases of the “clean skin” – well such a good buy and rather drinkable as we’d found out. Same guy serving so it was quite hard case. Then we went into Napier to have a quick look and walk around.

We parked at a car park on Marine Parade where a few other campers had parked as well. Rex managed to get an eye full of a young naked female German tourist – well he got out of BILITY just as she walked past her campers open door, this is what he tells me! No one was particularly worried:

It had just gone 12 so as we were getting a bit hungry and we found a café – Café UJAZI which was great. Very popular as well – lots of people and the tables were quickly snapped up as they became free. Said hello to Nicole from work as she walked past (after all NZ is a village) – she was down visiting family. Had a walk around town – seems summer is here so we both brought some sleeveless tops!

Homes above Napier from the Marine Parade.

Marine Parade beach views.

The German tourists were all lined up sun bathing on the beach, some looking like beached whales:

Then as we only had a short trip to our next camp site we did a vineyard or three… (Church Road, Mission Estate included – life is tough.)

Ooops back to Crab Farm so I could get 2 glasses! Different person serving.

Finally left Napier and on the road to Havelock North just after 3pm.

Oh, look, there are some vineyards off this road… Kim Crawford, Clearview.

Then it was getting close to vineyards closing time so we tootled off the camp ground in Havelock North via the Havelock North New World – boy what a shocker that car park is!!! Not sure if it’s the car park or the lack of driving skill of the people n cars trying to use it… We got supplies for the next few days to see us through to Feilding!

Made it to the camp ground at 5:15pm. There we sorted out what we’d actually purchased so far from the vineyards. Where did all that wine come from – and all those glasses??? By doing so we found out the real use for the shower cubicle – it’s for storing wine and glasses – woo hoo!!!

Ahhh, we put up the Christmas lights again, it seemed ashame not too.

Decided to do the domestic thing – so two loads of washing later and we were clean, well our clothes and towels were!

Dinner that night was fresh fish Craig had caught yesterday with salad, of course after cheese, salami and crackers, oh and some bubbles! Well it is New Years Eve so it’s bubbles time ;-)

Got talking (as you do) to the people in tents on one side of us and they were from Whitby. Other people from Whitby were also in the campground and they all seemed to think it was hilarious they didn’t know each other at home! We were invited to come see in the New Year with them later which we did. Tootled off to where they were with our bubbles, glasses and chairs. It was a great evening and we even managed to stay up will past midnight.

Links

East Cape and Feilding index page

BILITY home page