26 April 2017 - Whangarei Central Holiday Park, Northland

Our rental house all refreshed

Here we are still are, now in our seventh week, or is it eighth? The time has flown by and we have barely moved outside a small radius of the camp. We finally finished working on our rental property last Friday and shouted ourselves dinner at the local Café Divine, which has absolutely divine indian cuisine and not so divine surroundings. We do still have to return to the property daily to water the new lawns that are reluctant to establish themselves, but our agent is doing what she is paid to do and should have a new tenant settled in within a week or two; fingers and toes crossed. There is also the matter of the ripish feijoas, dropping to the ground which are better in my breakfast bowel, my mother’s preserving jars or our granddaughter’s ever eager stomachs. But today as I filled a supermarket bag, I realised that this might be the last I collected.

Out with my older son, Kit,  at the local Turkish Cafe

As I write this, my husband is polishing both the motorhome and car, ready for storage, and nursing the possibility of a cold, as you do if you are both male and about to embark upon a new adventure. Our suitcases are still empty, stashed in the Isuzu for now, but better there than in my parents’ garage loft where they have been since we returned in November last year. Suitcases are a burden to those living in cramped quarters, or quarters that would be considered cramped if they were shared with suitcases.

Walking the Town Basin with my friends Brenda and Basil

Autumn has finally arrived, we have had some gloriously clear days, cool mornings and sunshine that lift the temperatures to between 21 and 24 degrees from a cooler 10 degree start. One might have hoped to travel from these conditions to better in the early northern summer, but checking out the temperatures in the UK suggests otherwise. I expect to need my jacket, hat and gloves just as much as I did last year even though we are several weeks later into the season this time.

This time next week we will be ready to board our plane through to Qatar then on; we will have caught up with children, grandchildren, my parents and one sister, fare welling over meals, as we seem to have done all week; breakfast with this friend, morning tea with another, dinner with others, all forerunners to the social round we will have when we arrive in Suffolk, none of which is good for the figure.

So with that in mind I had better clear our debris from the camper seating to accommodate the family arriving later for takeaway pizzas, and consider that my next posting will be in the UK on my “Random Travel’s” blog. Bon voyage to us and to fellow travellers!