Last Supper at Somerset

On Thursday evening we had our last dinner (for now) at our most favourite Tauranga restaurant, Somerset Cottage in Bethlehem. We’ve been dining at Somerset since we arrived in Tauranga over 20 years ago. We’ve seen & followed the fortunes & changes to the restaurant (and the food scene in general) over the years  and watched as Somerset has grown to become one of Tauranga’s most popular restaurants & yet still remain intimate & personal under Rick & Annes’ wonderful  guidance. We’ve celebrated many anniversaries, birthdays & family occasions at Somerset & have had consistently wonderful experiences with fabulous food & ambience.

I’m going to especially miss my cook school dates, I’ve been attending the cook school every couple of months for at least ten years. And as many of the cook school attendees attest to, it’s not just the school we go for, it’s a great morning’s entertainment watching Rick prepare a fabulous multi course meal in no time at all, learning new techniques & happily listening to the banter that’s often happening between Anne & Rick. And then the icing on the cake, sitting down at the long table with a lovely glass of wine and likeminded people to dine on the meal we’ve watched Rick prepare.

I have a much treasured & frequently used stash of favourite Somerset recipes which I couldn’t possibly leave behind in the lock-up (including their Liquorice Icecream, which is now ‘top secret’) So whenever we need a Somerset fix  I’ll be able to bring them out to peruse & choose & hopefully prepare in our modest kitchen.  Somerset’s legendary lamb shanks are even making my mouth water just thinking about them while I'm typing this.

Until we meet again, farewell Anne & Rick & thanks for the memories.

Ultima Café

When we stepped outside yesterday morning we were in for a surprise! There parked just along the way from us was a baby Ultima, the Ultima Café.

This is a cute little van, an ideal weekender or for longer holidays, it has its sleeping quarters & bathroom facilities up front & in the nose like ours but at a total length of 6.5 metres compared with our 9 metres, the living area is quite a bit smaller. The sofa sits in the slide out opposite the kitchen facilities & TV and the entry is via the back of the van.

This particular Café was awaiting its new owners and their towing vehicle. Mal from “On the Road RV” (where we purchased our Ultima) had parked up the fifth-wheeler here for a few days while the hitch is being fitted to the ute. This is a great way for the new owners to be introduced to their fifth-wheeler,  they can take their time to learn all the idiosyncrasies without any pressure and if they have any queries these can be answered by the dealership which is just down the road. And, they also get to have a holiday at an iconic camping spot.

We have yet to meet the owners but I’m sure we’ll make ourselves known before they leave.

ETA- we've just spent a couple of hours with Alan & Anne who hail from Taranaki where they're heading home to Thursday. We were able to show them around our van & point out various things we've learnt since having our fifth-wheeler. David was also able to answer quite a few questions they had & we helped them get their mobile hot-spot working so Anne could access the internet. They are heading to the South Island next year for the Bluff Oyster Festival & we may well meet up again there. Happy travels Anne & Alan!

Get Us Out of Here!

Not quite what we had in mind.........

 

Shell Shocked

Today we entered a new phase of our lives; we are free to wander wherever the whim takes us. Scary stuff! We are parked up at The Mount, happy but a little shell-shocked. We said a final good-bye to all our lovely neighbours & then the house this morning and drove over here, where being school holidays, it is very busy this afternoon. Thankfully I had booked our site a few weeks ago & because we’re a fifth-wheeler we have two end to end sites. Most of the motorhomes & caravans that have arrived since us have had to squeeze in front to back & I’m not too sure I’d be happy being on the back site. As it is with our slide out, we can nearly pass a drink through the window to our neighbour.

As we were travelling here this morning I said to David “Well, that’s it darling, our whole life is behind us” referring to “Out There” attached to the ute & appearing larger than life through the back window. And he said, “No our whole life is “Out There” in front of us”

To any of our Tauranga & Mt Maunganui friends, if you're passing our door while we're here, the welcome mat is out.




I can assure you, the camp ground doesn't look this empty this evening!
But hey, it's The Mount & we're on "holiday", we'll also have to get used to being crowded in occasionally.



Eleventh Hour

This past week has been pretty frenetic & we're just about done in. And we desperately need a holiday. Oh wait, we are on holiday. For the next two plus years come this Friday!

We've been packing up the house & packing out the fifth-wheeler in readiness for Friday when our house settlement is finalised & we finally "hit the road", a whole two & half years since we started the ball rolling on our little adventure.

Even though the fifth-wheeler was about 80% packed already with our gear, I found deciding on the other 20% much harder than I'd imagined. It was a case of needs & wants and once decided on, where it was to go. I have packed a separate suitcase of our winter clothes which we'll get sent down to wherever we are at the beginning of next winter. Although I have included a few warm pieces should the weather not play ball & who knows we may just have enough to see us through. We also have the option of buying warm clothes if need be. After all we're not totally abandoning civilization.

As I'm sure everyone who has lived briefly or permanently in a boat or a RV of some sort knows, the key to keeping things in order in such a small space, is to put things back in their home once you have finished with it. And in our case this is going to be doubly important because it'll soon turn to chaos with so much stashed inside. I can honestly say that the van is packed to gunwales & then some. Every inch of every bit of available space is filled. I think we must be borderline on our weight but I know some of this will go as we eat our way through the surplus food. For the last few weeks we've been eating as much as possible out of the pantry to try & get the food store down & as some of you know I was not one to have a few bits & pieces. My pantry has always been overflowing. And now the van's pantry is overflowing & so is some of the space under the bed. I guess I'm going to have to learn new ways. We also have quite a few extra toiletries & half finished bottles of different liquids plus two of things that were in the van already; plastic wrap, kitchen towel etc. I'm sure once we work our way through all the extras we'll have a little more space to spread things about.

Not only have we been dealing with packing & sorting this week but we've both had heavy colds and have been feeling very miserable with little sleep because of our hacking coughs. Luckily the movers were delayed by a day because there would have been no way I'd have had everything ready for them yesterday. They arrived bright & early this morning and quickly had the truck loaded to the max. It wasn't so quick at the other end though. We are putting our gear into storage at a lock up facility for however long we are away. We had to combine the house load with a smaller unit of gear that we've had in storage since our shift from our original home a year ago.

"Hmm....now I wonder where I can fit this..."

It was one huge jigsaw puzzle trying to fit everything into & up to the roof of the new bigger unit. It was touch & go a few times & at one stage it looked like we might have needed an extra smaller unit to take the overflow. But the moving guys worked their magic & filled every available space although I had to look away a few times when I saw what was going where & what was going on top of it. And how they deftly threw my fragile boxes about! I'm sure my precious furniture & keepsakes will be fine & if by chance something has been damaged or broken I'll put it down to collateral damage.

We heaved a big sigh of relief when we pulled the roller door down & snapped the padlock. It's a huge weight off our minds knowing that everything is "safe & sound" tucked away in a monitored lock up for the foreseeable future.  

And then to top off the day just as we arrived home we got some more good news. We had sold David's Subaru a few months ago & I've had my VW Golf on Trade Me for the last month or so with no luck. In the last 2 or 3 weeks we've had plenty of inquiry especially when we dropped the price a good deal but nothing had come to fruition. One of the interested people had been planning to come & see the car last weekend when he was down in Hamilton from Whangarei but his wife had got ill & they had to return home without  a visit to Tauranga. He had kept in touch & managed to get his brother who lives at the Mount to come and check it over today. The brother took one look & said sold! So at the eleventh hour we now have no need to pay for storage on the car & it too is being delivered on Friday. All in all a very good outcome! I will be very sad to say goodbye to my beloved Golf, it has been a awesome car to drive, it was NZ new & is in immaculate condition with very low kilometres & if storage fees weren't so expensive I would have definitely kept it for when we return.

Saying goodbye to more than my car :)

So tomorrow we have just to clean the house which shouldn't be too much trouble being empty, take the last of the gear to the lock-up (& find a spot for it) & then I have a final appointment with my surgeon who will take one look at my poor feet & demand to know why they are so swollen! Perhaps I should have asked him to come help me this past week. :)

And then after one last night camping in our driveway we shall hitch the fifth-wheeler up & head across the bridge to The Mount camp ground for the next 2-3 weeks while we tie up all the loose ends with lawyers, accountants & banks & attend all the appointments we've made with Drs, dentists, optometrists & hair salons. Phew! And then we'll definitely need a holiday. And a mortgage to take care of the bills!

Blog2Print

I've been doing blogs for some time, some on our overseas trips (which were great to keep family & friends up to date with our travels), one I started on NZ Country Churches which I shifted to Flickr  & then there was a very special one on My Mate Moko, the friendly wild bottle nose dolphin who visited several towns around the East Coast of the North Island of New Zealand. It was a once in a life time experience & a great privilege for me when I swum with Moko over a number of months late one summer three years ago. It was also with great sadness that I attended Moko's memorial service in Whakatane after he went missing and was found washed up on a beach near our city's harbour a few weeks later.

Moko- a dolphin & a boy

It got me thinking about all my writings floating around out there in cyber space & about not having a hard copy to share or pass on if, or should I say when, I'm not around anymore. I had come across this website, Blog2Print, a long while ago & it sowed a seed. I saved it to my favourites and then once I had enough posts in my Tiki Touring blog I decided to have a first volume printed along with Moko's story. I had to carefully (not so it would seem) go through every post checking & correcting any mistakes I found. There were lots of layout options to choose from, hard or soft covered books along with different fonts & colours to choose. It was all very easy to follow & once I hit the submit button it only took two weeks for them to arrive on my doorstep from the States. And that was choosing the slow post option as well. So now I can quite happily say that I'm a published author!

Gateway to the North

We are back in Tauranga once again after a lovely, if somewhat wet, visit to Whangarei. The weather was not great with torrential rain, high winds & some flooding further south but it wasn't that much of a worry for us as we were there to spend some time with my sister & her husband parked up beside their lovely home.

We had a couple of lazy days which suited us fine after our full on days at the show & especially for me, standing on my feet for long periods of time. We had a lovely dinner one evening at Killer Prawn followed by a night cap at McMorrisseys Irish Pub where a weekly "Trad Night" was happening, (traditional Irish music). This brought back great memories of our visit to Doolin, County Clare; the traditional music capital of Ireland & where many famous Irish musicians have cut their teeth including Enya & Clannad (her family band).

The day before we'd driven around the harbour to see the spectacular new bridge which has recently opened, a fantastic piece of sculpture resembling a waka prow or Maori fish-hook. The distinctive fishhook-shaped counterweights allow the bridge to open to let yachts & large boats through to the Town Basin. The bridge was designed by English architect Martin Knight whose previous bridges include the Forth Replacement Bridge, that spans the Forth Estuary in Scotland, the Middle Rhine bridge in Germany and the 2.4km long Mersey Gateway in Northern England.



Named Te Matau a Pohe – translated as 'The fishhook of Pohe' the Maori chief who

 welcomed the first English settlers to Whangarei.

On the way home from dinner we did a little detour past the bridge again so we could see it lit up, what a fabulous sight. Unfortunately I only had my cell phone to take a photo with but at least you'll get the idea.

The next morning we said our good byes, packed up the van & shipped out, squeezing through the gate once again with not so many manoeuvres this time.

One thing we hadn't bargained on parked under the lovely weeping willows was the sticky nectar from the willow flowers that has coated the van & ute, they are both in need of a good clean. Originally we were going to stop off at Ardmore again, about half way, & continue on to Tauranga the next day but once on the road and making good time we decided we'd drive all the way through then we'd have a full day to recover before continuing to pack up the house. We were also both coming down with a heavy cold & feeling miserable, travelling helped keep us focused elsewhere. Then there was THAT race, the final one. We could watch it at home on the big screen.

When we left Tauranga 12 days ago after watching that morning's round of the America's Cup Final little did we know that we'd still be watching it when we got back here! There was the early euphoria of winning race after race which was then replaced with disbelief followed by agony & despair as each day moved us closer & closer to defeat. We watched it in Tauranga, we watched it in Miranda, Ardmore was a rest day, next we watched the first race of the day at Remuera & the second travelling in the car to the showgrounds, we watched quite a few more parked up at the Rally in Alexandra Park where every one of them was going to be the one, the winner. We watched someone's big screen on the stand next door at the Covi show (& were forced to listened to all the "experts" who knew better) & then we watched more agonising races in Whangarei.

Then with one final race to sail, we watched it back in Tauranga. Sadly it was not to be. It was not for the want of trying or the lack of support, Emirates Team New Zealand had the backing of a nation behind them, a grandstand of four & half million cheering them on. Team New Zealand can hold their heads high, they might not have brought home the Cup but they rallied a nation & made us proud to be Kiwis. We salute  you Team New Zealand.

This cartoon just about summed up yesterday's race-

 

But these were my favourites- 

 

Farewell Tour

After the Covi Show we headed north to Whangarei to say goodbye to my sister & family before we head south in a few weeks. It could be at least a couple of years before we are back up this way again although with a nephew at Otago Uni we’re likely to meet up down there at some stage.
On the way up I managed to get a couple of church photos to add to my collection. It’s a pity that we have the van on the back as it’s much harder to do little side trips to find the churches. These two were only just off the main road with reasonable places outside to turn around in.

The iconic Puhoi Church, St Peter & Paul built in 1881. Puhoi was New Zealand's first Bohemian settlement.

 

Kaiwaka St Pauls. It’s a pity there are so many overhead cables & power poles around the churches sometimes, they make it hard to get a clean shot. I’ll have to do some photo-shopping! 

 

We made good time to Whangarei, visited the public dump station to offload the last weeks waste & arrived up the family’s drive around 5:30pm. Luckily there was a bit of light left in the day as it took a fair bit of manoeuvring to get “Out There” over there including rearranging  the edge of the rock garden somewhat!

Jerry helped out with directions

 

Either the van had grown or the yard had shrunk but we’re sure it was a lot bigger last time we visited. We are tucked up under the willows & beside the cherry blossom with a little babbling brook passing by the rear of the van. Unfortunately it is once again raining & the brook is growing in size. I think a water rat has just been de-homed as I saw him scuttling off, away from the van, he tried to climb a tree but fell off. Hmm……I hope he continues upstream.

 

A Succesful Show

The Covi Caravan & Motorhome Show is well & truly over now & we have headed north. The whole weekend was a very busy one not only inside the showground halls but also outside in the huge car park where as you can see there were hundreds of motorhomes, buses, caravans & fifth-wheelers parked up for the weekend rally. Parked up in straight & tidy rows, every available space was taken with the overflow filling up another smaller car park next door. Here in our park I counted  10 rows of vehicles stretching back probably at least 500 metres to the main gates.

Unfortunately the weather wasn’t that wonderful on any of the 3 days & on Saturday night around 2am a horrendous thunder & lightning storm raged directly overhead for an hour or so. The rain was torrential & the noise on the roof deafening & every time there was a flash of lighting it lit up the whole van through the skylights and the thunder claps actually shook the van.  As I lay there listening, I wondered how many vehicles might have sprung a leak and also whether the vehicles laid out there like they were, might attract lightning bolts. The morning dawned fine & clear & it looked like no one had suffered too much although our friends told us they de-camped to their car in the middle of the storm, feeling much safer there.

We were at the show for two reasons; as happy owners,  & clients, we were helping out “On the Road RV” on their Ultima Stand and secondly we had a number of items to purchase.

 

Over the last 25 years we have regularly attended shows with numerous products from most of our business; Fieldays, Home Shows, A&P Shows, Boat Shows & Bike Shows, we have done dozens here in NZ & in Europe, UK & the States, & now we can add Motorhome Show to the list. But it was very different when you don’t own the business there's none of that "sale, sale, sale" pressure there. We had a great time although we were both tired by the end, we’d forgotten how hard standing on your feet all day, smiling nicely & talking constantly can be. As owners with a lot of experience now of living in the van for both long & short periods we were able to answer many questions accurately & truthfully and offer a load  of advice to people that were contemplating buying a fifth-wheeler either for holidays or for permanent  living. There are a surprising amount of people  who are making the decision, like us, to become permanent gypsies.

Two couples who had made the decision to buy Ultimas came back to our van after the show one evening to check on how we had set up the interior.  One couple brought a bottle of bubbly to celebrate their purchase which was shared around.  (Excuse the out of focus photos they were taken with my cell phone)

 

We had Sunday off as we needed to follow up on a couple of items we were looking at buying, have a look around the stands & then head off to Whangarei in the early afternoon.

And here are our new purchases, a 3.4 Takacat inflatable dinghy & a 2kw Honda generator which should help out with my power hungry computer amongst other things.  Now we just need to rearrange the ute & fifth-wheeler again to fit everything in & still allow room for the outboard which will be the next purchase. It is becoming a real juggling act & I know we will be off-loading a few smaller things for good once we get back to Tauranga.

 

And here's one for the road...

Alexandra Park- Auckland Covi Rally

Throughout the day RVs of every shape, size, make & model have been pouring into the carpark- I'll add to these photos as the weekend progresses. This carpark & another through the fence will be full by tomorrow night.  It's now 5:30, the rain has started & still vehicles are arriving. (click on the photos to see a larger size)


10am

1pm

Hi Chris :)

2pm



4pm



"Lean with Us"- 8am Friday morning & all satellite dishes are pointed north in anticipation of NZ winning the America's Cup. We didn't & had to wait until Saturday morning to bring the cup home.
 



Packed in tight; outside our Fifth-Wheeler, Friday evening

Our neighbours

Friday night

Thru the fence behind our van, Alexandra Park Trots