North of Auckland

We enjoyed Ray’s Rest but had arranged to meet friends near Mangawhai so we headed off and got through the Auckland traffic with very little trouble. Bruce decided that instead of going on the new motorway, we would stop in Orewa for lunch. That turned out to be impossible because there was some sort of surfing event on, so we continued to Hatfields Beach. Our resolution for this holiday is that we would have at least one beach walk each day, and Hatfields was a lovely beach to walk on.

There has been quite a bit of erosion here and there are several houses perched precariously near the edge of a crumbly cliff! Not a comfortable position to be in.

After lunch we continued on and found that we could not re-join the motorway so kept on the old State Highway towards Mangawhai. The chosen stop for the night turned out to be not so great, so after a coffee with our friends, Bob and Jean, we decided to head to Maungaturoto Country Club for the night. That was a much better site.

The only downside of this place was the roosters! The house adjacent to the parking area had at least 4 roosters that we could see, all competing to see who could crow the loudest. We knew what was to come in the morning, and sure enough, at 4.30am they started!

I would have to say though, that after becoming aware of their crowing we were able to get back to sleep. It was nice to be around the lambs, the bantam and her chickens, and even to watch the roosters protecting their little harems of hens.

The next morning brought an unwelcome surprise for Bob and Jean, in the way of a flat tyre.

Bruce and I knew how that felt as we had experienced this in the South Island, so between Bruce and Bob they were able to remove the tyre and we drove them into the township of Maungaturoto to have it repaired. Half a day had gone by the time it was all sorted, but we still had time to head off to Whangarei to a couple of attractions that we wanted to see there.