To New Zealand

23rd Feb – 10th March, 2008 Italy, France, England and New Zealand (whew!)

At last we’ve found some time to catch up with the blog..... for more international pics, see http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/findthebinghams/BlogpixAlpsToNewZealand

Skiing in Italy was great fun and we discovered La Thuile by accident (trying to cross Le Petit Col de St Bernard, which we (but not Autoroute) now know is closed for 6 months of the year...). We skied with a Scottish couple, also in a Hymer, taking time off work and who’d built their own house........sound familiar?

After crossing France we spent 2 days with Phyllis and Ken (thanks for having us -and our van!), flew Home to Sheffield for 2 days, then sat on a plane for 24 hours – OK if you like aircraft food and jet lag, but bad for passing around cold bugs (sadly, we got caught).

Diane and Reg kindly met us at the airport at midnight, and we stayed 2 nights with them in Albany. Many thanks to them both for being so welcoming, hospitable and helpful! Their Trailite campervan is lovely; similar size/age to ours and very comfortable, just right for us touring NZ. Diane provided loads of maps and information (and fruitcake – thanks), all essential as there’s just so much to see, it’s hard to decide where to go. So - thanks everyone for your suggestions, especially Erik, who highlighted a really good route for us around the 2 islands.

Aukland feels a clean and green city, with parks, nature reserves and lots of trees. It’s built on creeks, estuaries and hundreds of bays, so there are loads of wonderful beaches. Sailing boats are everywhere – possibly the highest per capita in the world.

Rick was intrigued by this clever machine that switches linked concrete blocks from one lane to another to manage the tidal flow system over the bridge – no dangerous red crosses and green arrows here.

It was so good, and much fun, to catch up with Janet, Fraser and Rory, whose house is 50m from Takapuna beach, with stunning views over Browns Bay and Rangitoto Island volcano (currently inactive!). We talked and laughed a lot, and met their friends. Some of us tried out the Woodhill Forest mountain bike circuit – prize for the most stamina went to Rory, close second was Erik, and trailing rather was Rick (who cites his cold in mitigation but did manage one ramp....). Very many thanks for having us and we hope Fraser feels better now. See you again in 5 weeks (and we’ll get a photo then).

Aukland’s Sky Tower took 545,000 meat pies, 1,245,000 cuppas and 28,000 tons of concrete to build. This is where mad people free fall down 192m, albeit well-tethered - they look surprised to find they pause after 10m, to become a photo opportunity for the more sane in the public viewing area....

Aukland Museum was a good place to learn more about Maori history and see some of their intricate carving – the original tongue piercing? I suspect we’ll see more. Aukland is built on a volcano field, dormant at the moment.......but the museum exhibition showed what might happen to the City when (not if) activity starts...Pompeii has given us an inkling!

It was great to meet up with Sue and Sandy in Warkworth (40 km N of Aukland and 11000km from its Northumberland namesake) – thanks for taking us to some fabulous places. They not only treated us to excellent fish and chips, but took us to eat them on Omaha Beach, a lovely stretch of typical-NZ sand, surf and sky – just beautiful, and where the over-50s had to go paddling.....

They also showed us Goat Island, where we watched big blue maomao fish in the wonderfully clear water, with rock pools cut into intriguing volcanic rocks. This was soooo beautiful that we plan to return to investigate further.

We’ve only been here 5 days but already, I’m running out of superlatives, so expect repeats of words like ‘amazing’, ‘stunning’, ‘glorious’ and ‘fantastic’, interspersed with ‘ooh’, ‘aaah’ and ‘WOW’.

Off to the glow worm caves in Waitomo now...............