Thursday 29th September
It was departure day, so after getting up and having breakfast, we pulled the tent down just before the rain set in. We drove north out of Martinborough and joined highway 2 at the town of Carterton. We had arranged to wwoof for a family in Carterton but they had emailed us on our way up the South Island saying that due to circumstances they weren't taking wwoofers on for the foreseeable future. Driving through the town, we wouldn't say we were disappointed that we wouldn't be staying there. It may have been due to the lousy weather but the town didn't seem to have much going for it. We carried on north through the town of Masterton, stopping only to fill up on some of the cheapest petrol we'd seen in months. The remoteness of places on the South Island helped push the prices up, while on the North Island they were a good 20 cents a litre cheaper. About 30ks past Masterton, we found the Tui brewery. Tui is one of the bigger beer brands in New Zealand, so seeing as we'd visited the Monteith's brewery and would be visiting the Speights brewery down in Dunedin, we thought we'd drop by for a look around. Tours weren't being conducted at the time but we still had a look around the museum and gardens of the brewery. We didn't spend too long there but it was a good spot to stretch our legs. It was on round to Palmerston North from there, where we made a brief stop at a supermarket to pick up some lunch. For the final short stretch of the journey, we passed through the town of Bulls, which I've mentioned in the blog before, before reaching our destination of Wanganui. The town of Wanganui stands on the Wanganui river and can also be pronounced Whanganui (so Fanganui) but I'll stick with the former as its one less letter to write every time I type it out. Our campsite was quite a drive out of town but was located in a fantastic spot right on the banks of the river. Unfortunately, we'd timed our visit with the school holidays, so it was pretty hectic with children running around the places. We found a decent spot to pitch the tent near the facilities and then headed off back in to town. We stopped at the information centre and picked up a few maps and booklets to see what Wanganui had to offer. We also had a quick walk round the town but decided to leave the bulk of it for when we had the time for a proper visit. Instead, we popped to yet another supermarket for some dinner and then drove back to the campsite. We had to shoehorn ourselves into the busy kitchen along with all the members of the Wellington rowing club who were having their camp. They had tried their best to occupy every piece of space but we got our things on a corner and managed to cook up our dinner of kumara chips, veg and fish fingers. It had been a quiet day but we had had a pretty long drive through miserable weather to Wanganui, so we were looking forward to getting out and about the following day.
Friday 30th September
Our hope of the sandflies getting fewer as we headed north weren't coming to fruition. To add insult, they seemed to be half the size that they were on the South Island, so they could squeeze through the fine mesh on our tent and somehow knew where the door was, so would flood in every time we cracked the zip. We decided to have a lie in in an attempt to avoid the rowing club in the kitchen. That was a waste of time too. The teachers/parents had seemingly moved in to the kitchen and were there from first light until lights out. We ignored the chaos and got ourselves some breakfast whilst deciding how to spend our day. Charlotte had browsed the map we'd received when we checked in and had picked out a number of things she wanted to do, so we split them over the couple of days that we had in Wanganui. Our first port of call was to the Botanic Gardens, which we would have liked to walk to but were too far away, so we had to drive out. When we pulled up, there was only one other car in the gardens and they were a family playing around a picnic bench close to the car park, so we knew we pretty much had the gardens to ourselves. We clambered up a long flight of stairs and had a look at a map of the gardens. It was a shocking map, so we just wandered in the direction we thought was right, it was a lovely huge area, with a number of conservatories as well as an orchid house. The one fault we had with the gardens was that they had very few plaques telling us what the flowers or trees were. After the hubbub of the campsite, we were just enjoying the piece and quiet of the gardens. We wandered through a large native area that was full of various ferns and shrubs and finally, walked round a lake back to the car. We ascended the steps once more as we had thought we had seen the words “herb garden” on the map but when we got there we found it said “here garden”, whatever that means! We had a good couple of hours and it was just starting to get a bit busier by the time we left. We drove back the way we came, stopping about half way at a place called Virginia Lake. This was another thing that Charlotte had seen on the map and it seemed like a good spot to go for a stroll and have some lunch. We found a shaded bench looking out across the lake and sat down to have a sandwiches and various healthy and unhealthy snacks. We kept a slice of bread behind to feed the ducks as we wandered round but it all went on one duck and her ducklings. The lake was packed with various birds and we almost ran afoul of 2 separate geese. The first was sitting on her nest just off the pathway and gave us a good warning hoot as we walked past. The second was standing on the path and made himself as large as possible to scare us off. We were sure we'd of just got a bit of a peck but we didn't want to risk their wrath. As well as the ducks and geese there were also lots of Pukekos running around the edge of the lake, looking like skinny chickens, after the bread all the ducks were being fed. Just as we got back to where we started, a huge black cloud had appeared overhead and looked ready to shed its load right on top of us, so we picked up the pace back towards the car. On the way back, we did pass through a walk through aquarium that was a cacophony of parakeets, parrots and even a Guinea fowl or two. As the weather had taken a bit of a turn, we decided to head in to town and make use of the free wifi at the information centre in order to catch up with some blogging and photos that we had gotten behind on due to lack of wifi. It didn't take us too long to get up to date, so we ventured outside to be greeted with pouring rain. After deliberating whether or not it was worth going back to save the towels we'd left on the washing line we guessed we were already too late, so hung around for a bit of a look in some shops before finally returning to inspect the damage. Our towels got of pretty easy, it was our tea towel that suffered most. In fact, it had disappeared completely off the washing line. We knew who the culprits would be, those dastardly rowing people dominating the kitchen. We went for a surreptitious look round the kitchen which was hard as they were still in there cooking. Had we not seen them leave the night before we would have guessed they had been in there all night and all day. We asked them about the missing towel but they all pleaded ignorance. We decided to leave it and headed to reception to grab one to tide us over. We managed to get in a sly dig against the rowers when we did though. When we got back to the car with a fresh tea towel in hand a plump lady came out and said “oh is this your tea towel? I just looked at it and thought it's definitely not one of ours!”. It with its burn hole in it and you obviously didn't “just” do that you thieving scum bag. We bit our lips, not really wanting to kick up a fuss over a $2 tea towel (though the price wasn't the issue, it was the ignorance). After freshening up, the rain pretty much set in for the day, so we sat back and relaxed in the tv room, amongst the clamour and chaos of the rowing club. We weren't to be budged from our sofa though. Once the kids had all gone to bed, we cooked up our beans and pasta before waiting for the rain to abate slightly, to allow us to see if our tent was suitable for sleeping in and not washed into the Wanganui River.
The tent was there and despite the torrential rain, our little room inside was nice and dry. When we got up it seemed like it was going to be a lovely day, as there was clear blue sky in every direction. By the time we'd gone in for breakfast, faced the rowers for yet another meowing and returned to the tent, a covering of grey clouds had moved in. It was still pretty muggy though and we stuck with our days plans. Although the campsite was situated about 6kms from town, we decided to walk in following the river all the way as best we could until we reached the Saturday morning market. We walked round the various stalls but quickly came to the conclusion that it was nowhere near as good as the one we'd been to the previous weekend in Nelson. As it was still relatively early, we didn't bother getting lunch there and instead crossed the Wanganui river to visit the War Memorial Tower. As if climbing a tower wouldn't be enough, we also had to climb about 200 steps just to get to it, as it was located right on top of a hill overlooking the town. The tower looked like a cross between a turret from a castle and a lighthouse, with a further 150 steps for us to clamber up. The view at the top was worth it though and it would have been even better had it been a clear day. We could just about make out the snow covered slopes of a volcano in the distance but the clouds obscured the summit. When we were joined at the top by hordes of screaming children, we decided to head back down the dark, wet steps to the bottom. We followed the first lot of steps back down to the riverside and walked up river to a bakers that was highly recommended on our map. The only drawback was that the area it was in certainly felt like it was the wrong side of the tracks. After purchasing and eating our pie, sausage roll and a cream doughnut each, we didn't hang around. Once again, we returned to the the river, crossing it and heading back in to the centre of town. We were on the look out for any sort of shop that would sell a pin badge but our search was fruitless and we were getting tired from all the walking we'd been doing. To rest our legs we paid a visit to the information centre’s wifi room so we could upload the photos from the day. With an hour and a half walk back to the campsite still to come we swung by the supermarket to pick up a bit of an energy boost in the shape of a banana and some biscuits. By the time we passed Delhi and Madras Avenues and arrived back, we'd been on our feet for a solid 7 hours, so we collapsed in to our camping chairs for a rest. We watched from them as the campsite slowly filled up for the evening, as if it wasn't full enough already from all the rowers present. It was safe to say we were looking forward to moving on. We decided to let the kitchen empty before cooking dinner, as we fancied a day off from the dirty looks we'd get from the rowing parents, as if we'd just entered their own private kitchen. We ended up being slightly premature entering the kitchen but the large group wasn't too much trouble and we managed to get a seat to enjoy our fish fingers, mash and veg.
James and Charlotte
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