A week away.

Off on Sunday to Bruce's Memorial service. His son Michael who now lives in Britain spoke. Due to  acrimonious divorce between his first wife Helen and Bruce, Michael revealed that it wasn't until Bruce spent 3 weeks in London for Michael's 40th birthday that he really got to know his father - and found him to be quite intelligent! He also recounted the story about when he went to highschool and the science teacher read the riot act about not fiddling with the gas taps. Michael was pretty rebellious at this time, and promptly blocked up one tap and turned on the other tap and lit it - which caused blow back and did serious damage to the gas system, and narrowly avoided a major disaster.  The principal said - Go and ring your mother. However she was not able to be contacted. Bruce was on duty as a guard at Waikeria Prison, so when the principal said - Go and ring your father. Michael replied - I dont know the number for Waikeria Prison, and I'm not sure I'm allowed to ring him. This sent the staff into clouds of consternation!!

They used video that Jill had taken at Hahei, but unfortunately Liz (I think) thought it would be a good idea to black out everyones faces except for Bruce, which really took the atmosphere away.

After the service we went and had a few drinks and then went on to a Thai place for a meal.

Wren had had a few - hence the look of  consternation on Margaret's face. Wren has turned 75 this year, so not looking to bad!

You will probably have seen the facebook post about Ohingaiti so onto the Wednesday when we pushed on to the Hutt Valley Wellington Camping ground. The other lady from Gisborne was with her husband in a campervan, so Duncan took the car to the Golf Rules course, while I awaited Heather who bussed out. We took for ever to get to the centre of Lower Hutt as the buses were not very reliable. We had lunch at the Dowse and then looked at the exhibitions. They were interesting - some a little bizarre also!

Heather outside the Dowse Art Gallery

On Friday I had a restful morning, but with  a long walk to get the paper. It's not often that a camping ground has no shop closeby. Then Duncan and I successfully negotiated the buses to get into town - mainly by ignoring the bus schedule. We met up with Heather to begin our degustation meal at Noble Rot to celebrate Heather's 70th birthday.

The Amuse Bouche was steak tartare in wilted cabbage leaf.

Picture a bit blurry. Roasted egg plant with a parmesan wafer

Picture a bit dark. Beetroot done several different ways with a  chevre cheese

The fish course which I only had a bit of. Octopus, kingfisher, and dried olive crumb

Main course. Steak with different varieties of mushroom.

All sorts of tastes for dessert.

My only regret was that I didn't photograph the bottles of wine to which they were matched. Each course had the food and the wine explained. Made it back to the camp - it is quite a walk from the bus stop, so we felt fine in the morning - no after effects of too much eating and drinking the night before.
It was very gusty overnight and so it was a little nerve wracking setting off over the Rimutakas but it was OK - a bit slow as we did pull over quite a bit. Duncan said "Lets go to Castlepoint and stay a night!" Somehow our spontaneous trips always seem a disappointment. It was when we started to see a trail of vintage cars that we began to think maybe Castlepoint wasn't the sleepy little seaside hollow that we had envisaged. Indeed, it was pretty crowded and very gusty. After lunch in the caravan we decided to turn back which made it a pretty long day until we got to Hastings golf course where we can stay as they have caravan sights there

At least it was an easy drive home the next day, and straight on to packing up for the next trip - heading to Oz.
Duncan was very pleased to get 85.5% in the golf exam.