When most people say that they had a great weekend you assume that there was boozing and whoring or maybe fun and adventure. At a pinch, relaxation and serenity.

I think we all know I’m not ‘most people’. Saturday I drove 222 miles. Sunday I drove 210 miles.

You’re now assuming that I drove From Barcelona to Monte Carlo in a 1960s open top sports car, with Matt Monroe in the passenger seat and a beautiful woman on the radio.

Yeah… that’s not what happened.

Saturday I drove the A14 and the M6 to Birmingham and then on Sunday I drove all the way to sunny Gatwick. With a trailer!

I need to explain a little… Some time ago I used to drive a Toyota Carina. It was a horrible thing. Slow and underpowered, but willing to go when poked with a pointy stick. Until it died. An engine comes in two parts – a bit that stays still and another bit that goes back and forth. The Carina died when some of the ‘staying still’ bit started moving and quite a bit of the moving back and forth bit stopped. It wasn’t pretty.

Anyway, at this point I fell unconditionally and helplessly in love with my brother’s car (that’s wasn’t the word you were expecting, was it?). So, I drove four hours from Cambridge to Blackburn to buy an identical one. A wonderful little car that isn’t desperately fast but which doesn’t need to slow down much for the corners.

My little silver car looks just like this but, well, silver...

Then, both my grandparents got ill so I bought a Skoda Octavia. Faster, but the kind of car where you have to slow down for corners. And that made it dull to me. Most upsettingly, my wife stole the little silver car.

So… on Saturday I went to Birmingham and bought a second Little Car – 80k miles, a beautifully tight engine and gearbox, and finished in the metalic green paint that I rather like. Yeah, I know… I’ve heard it before. Two people, three cars. Ah fuckit. I can only drive one at a time and the ‘sensible’ car I drive does 50mpg…

Anyway… Sunday I drove down to Gatwick and stuck GB, her mum, her sister and her sister’s bloke on a plane to Egypt. Which wasn’t actually the reason it was a good day, but it’s a good point to leave this post…

When we got to Auckland we spoke to a couple of people about our plans. Some expressed pleasant surprise that we weren’t blasting from Auckland to Wellington to go do big town stuff. Others told us it was one of the best things we could do.

I’m glad we went.

From our brief stay, I have to say that New Plymouth is a weird little town. It’s wedged between Mount Egmont and the Tasman Sea, it has major routes through the centre that bring to mind an American strip, and it has a very British feeling town centre. It also has one of the most stunning botanic gardens I’ve ever seen.

Sparrow watching us eat, by GB

My knowledge of botanic gardens is somewhat limited, but I know that gardens should be close cropped lawns with specimen plants in perfect flowerbeds. They should be boring places that my grandparents would love and I hate. They should…

Spot the grass...

That’s the view from the tea shop where we ate cake for breakfast. You’ll notice the huge expanses of closely cropped grass. In fact, with the exception of the Brooklands Bowl, there’s virtually no grass in the place – it’s all lakes, trees and shady little glades. If it wasn’t for the steep sides to the valley, you could easily get lost in there…

By the way, over the Poets’ Bridge you can see Mount Egmont. It’s subtle, isn’t it? 2,5000m of volcano sitting there, apparently overdue to erupt. And it has a bit of a habit of doing so in an explosive way…

Poets' bridge at the top end of the main lake

The bridges here were funded by a park board member after he won a substantial sum on the horses in Auckland. Rather strangely, he went missing some 9 years later and his body was found floating under it…

If you go down to the woods today, by GB

Two thirds of the way down the park is the Brooklands bowl, where crews were setting up for a Cliff Richard concert. The bowl is a natural amphitheatre in the grounds of what was once the governor’s gardens…

Beside the stage looking out at the amphitheatre...

...and looking back down

The house itself was razed to the ground in 1861 during the First Taranaki War, leaving just this behind. From this photo we can deduce two things: if you must take a photo of a chimney in shadow on a bright day, be prepared for a crappy photo, and; if you are going to piss of the Maori, build your house out of chimneys…

It's a horrible photo. Sorry.

These things are called Rhododendrons in my world...

...even though I know that's something else completely

By this time we’d wasted a good few hours in the park and we needed to get moving, so we walked back to the car. On the way we discovered this guy…

Black shag

No matter what anyone else says, I’d still have posted a photo of him even if the Kiwis did call them Great Cormorants like the rest of the planet. It’s not that the Kiwis are wrong… it’s just that when the rest of the planet started calling cormorants and shags “cormorants”, they went the other way and called them all shags. I like your style, New Zealand…

Right by the exit to the park is a waterfall. It’s a wonderful thing that was designed some 100 years before it was actually built. Why? Well, because it’s above water level and you can turn it on…

Just after GB had confused me by turning it on...

Right, it’s gone lunchtime, we’ve got 280km to drive and one of us is wearing sunglasses… hit it!

View Day 4 – New Plymouth to Palmerston North in a larger map

Yeah… our next (brief) stop wasn’t even outside the city limits…

Hows that for a beautiful sea...?

And the next was 10 miles further down the road in Oakura…

Fluid dynamics in action, by GB

And then again 5 miles later…

The Mondeo (hereby retrospectively named 'Fanny') losing at Hide & Seek

One of the things that we haven’t touched on is the Americana that was in New Plymouth the night we were, quite simply because we had no idea what it was. On the open road, with the local rock radio station on, we quickly found out more. The Americana was a large group of American cars which were touring the north island for charity, putting on a bit of a show and generally doing good.

And they were heading east. We realised this when eager crowds of locals welcomed us to their town with an alarming number of American flags. We didn’t have the heart to tell them that we were British…

Our run from New Plymouth to Palmerston North was dull. Really dull. Nothing happened at all. I definitely didn’t get us there in record time, spend an hour in a long distance blast across the country with a big Holden, or accidentally (no, I mean this bit) break the speed limit by 50%. In my defence, the roads were better quality than any ‘A’ road in the UK, and I’d just overtaken a huge lorry that was throwing things at me. Yeah, you’re right… that’s no excuse. The big car did it and drove away…

Now.. Palmerston North. What a boring place…

Let me give you some exciting facts about Palmerston North… It’s the 11th largest town in NZ, with a population of 80k (Cambridge has a population of 113k). Half the population is under 25 years old. 10% of the workforce works for the education sector. It was renamed Palmerston North by the Post Office, who kept getting confused with Palmerston (pop 1,000) on the south island. Part of the local landfill is named “Mount Cleese” after John Cleese suggested the city would drive someone to suicide. Oh, and it has a fantastic library…

PNLibrary on its 80th anniversary - Palmerston North Library Flickr stream

There’s quite a few pictures in the library Flickr stream that are worth checking out. Oh how I’d love a library like this instead of the badly funded mess we have in Cambridge…

After generally nerding out in the library (and possibly terminally embarrassing a librarian by telling her how much we loved their library) we headed off for our next exciting restaurant adventure – except this time I won’t tell you anything about what we had to eat because the menu was all in Korean. The (Californian) plum wine was bloody nice though…

Day three and we’re leaving Auckland for the coastal town of New Plymouth. This news amuses some who tell us that no-one goes to New Plymouth…

For the sake of my sanity (I’m currently fighting a migraine that started while I was in New Zealand 4 weeks ago) we’ll break this into three parts. Each part is more exciting than the last. Well, each part has more photographs than the previous one.

Auckland to Hamilton

Auckland to Hamilton is actually a deeply boring road… I have no doubt that when we drove the road it was a wide and wonderful road through beautiful countryside, but compared to the later roads it was just dull. Sorry.

So, instead, I’ll talk about the roads. Maybe our visit to New Zealand was perfectly timed for the end of the financial year, but everywhere we went we found roadworks. Strangely, these roadworks seem dedicated to improving roads that were in frankly superb condition. As far as we could see, New Zealand had a wonderful habit of improving roads before they fail instead of waiting until they fail, patching them for five years, and then closing the whole bloody thing for a month. More surprisingly, roadworks are accompanied by equipment and workmen…

Hamilton to Mokau

In Hamilton we filled the car with petrol for the first time, and let Karen guide us back out of Hamilton, following a ’69 Camero (with the helpful reg plate 69CMRO) in a wonderfully gentle run through rolling countryside. For the first time (and there were many) I wished that I was driving anything other than the lumbering hire car we had. This was countryside that was created for a mid-sixties V8 lump and some half decent rock music on the radio, but we had a year old Mondeo automatic that cruised wonderfully, but had all the get up and go of a lethargic tortoise…

You always know that the road ahead is going to be exciting when you see a bloody great sign that tells you which of the roads ahead are currently open.

The road from Eight Mile Junction to Mokau had me desperate for another alternative car – this time Little Un, our little Corolla SR – as the road headed up into the hills. Lots of hill climbs and sweeping bends make for an exciting road for a driver, but ultimately a boring road to talk about. Especially when you can’t stop very frequently to take photos…

Every few miles the hills would suddenly part to leave us in a large plain – like a cheaply designed “sandbox” computer game, where the sandbox limits are marked by suspiciously convenient steep faced hills…

Panorama near Awakino

Panorama near Awakino

Why were we parked here? Well, because it seems like every time they improve the road and cut a corner off, they turn the old bit into a parking area or a picnic area…

The old road...

The old road...

Mount Damper Falls

Leaving the mountain road, we followed the coast for a while and for the first time ever, I realised I had no idea what was over the horizon. I know that sounds stupid, so let me explain…

I’ve spent the very vast majority of my life in England, and I have a pretty good sense of direction, so I can normally tell you that in that direction is Ely; Norwich is somewhere over there; London is that-a-way; and Milton Keynes is that way hiding roughly behind Bedford. Going abroad, I’ve always known that Just north of Varaderro and Cayo Coco is Florida; east of Shannon is Washington (ish); and south of Cork is either Britany or Northern Spain.

Suddenly I realised I had no idea where Australia was. Obviously, it was over there somewhere, but if I went due west, would I hit Australia? If not, did I hit Africa, or was I too far south for that?

In a strange way, no matter how stunning the views were, I was actually slightly relieved to dip back inland and drive across the hills, so a turning to the almost ‘eponysterical’ Mount Damper Falls had to be taken.

Once again I fell in love with Kiwi roads. Once again, Karen went a bit nutty.

There’s a wonderful tickle of pleasure runs down my spine when roads become enjoyable, and this road had me genuinely giggling. The wide(ish) road swept round the foot of mountains,across views that had us slack jawed. Repeatedly the road quality dropped slightly until we’re driving a rally cross stage across roads topped with rough lime gravel.

View mount damper falls in a larger map

Where did the gravel come from? And if they could get a gravel truck down here, why were only very short sections of the road tarmaced?

Then we found the rockfall signs.

We’ve all seen them. They’re stupid signs that mean nothing. Have you ever seen a rock fall on a road?

The first time we've seen a rockfall, by GB

The worrying thing is that this is a photo of me moving a boulder out of the way so we could get past. On a road which had a school bus down it earlier that day. That meant that… Oh feck. Still, it was only a little rock…

We continued on down a road that curved round cliff faces and (on one occasion) a tree. We drove up a slope steep enough that the automatic gearbox went a little nutty and I could smell something getting distressingly warm.

Finally, we reached Damper Falls.

No, sorry, we reached the car park for the footpath to Damper Falls – a 45 minute walk across a field with no shade at 2pm.

I look at GB. She looks at me. She says just two words… “Fairy Falls”.

We turn back.

Purple Trees, by GB

Driving back the views were disconcertingly different – to the extent that I wondered if we had taken some hidden mis-turning.

I can't live there either, apparently (by GB)

Once again, a jovial suggestion that we could happily live ‘here’ is shot down. “It’s a bit rural”. We live in the middle of a bloody field. “A field that’s 10 miles from a county town”. Arse…

We see human life again – a local farmer in a beaten up van; a school bus loaded with children; and a guy tending multicolour bee hives – and wonder how the hell this road copes with traffic. There’s no where to go, and I’d be less than comfortable trying to get two cars past each other in the rockfall zone…

I'm sure those weren't there on the way up... (by GB)

About 45 minutes has passed since we went up this road and yet more rocks have fallen and been cleared out of the way. I decide that rally driving is more exciting that sight seeing…

New Plymouth

We arrive in New Plymouth at the “Nice Hotel & Bistro”. Despite all logic, it’s actually a decent hotel, although a little… poncy. Our room is colour co-ordinated. The bathroom has a collection of pebbles in the corner. And, from our balcony, we can see straight down the top of the busty woman drinking tea in the dining room.

We have just one objective tonight – to get drunk and to have some food. Two. Two objectives – to get drunk, have some food, find some aftersun and badly rip off a Monty Python sketch. I’ll start again…

New Plymouth is strangely beautiful. It’s not the most stunning town for architecture, but it’s sat between the Tasman Sea and the semi-active volcano of Mount Egmont.

As with all towns we visited, we wonder where the kids are. This town should have an eternal struggle between chavs, emos, goths and townies. Every street corner should have a couple of kids making loud comments about boobs every time a woman walks past. Every door opening should have either litter, a homeless guy or a drunken bint announcing loudly that she’s “‘aving a slash!”

Nothing.

Still, I’ve jumped ahead to drunken time. While we’re still sober, I find a pharmacy and ask the chemist for some anti-histamine. She looks at my arm in horror and tells me that I’m looking very burnt. My arm has got significantly worse than yesterday and I’m starting to look like someone poured scalding water on my right hand. I convince her that it’s an allergy and that I always get it on my hands for 2 weeks of summer.

She pretends to believe me, but refuses to sell me anti-histamine, instead giving me a hydro-cortizone ointment. An ointment that I have just this second remembered is prescription only in this country, and I’ve probably just transported it illegally back to this country…

We head back to a restaurant we’ve seen (Andres) and spend about £90 on a feast for two, with some superb local wine, coffee and spirits to finish. We’ve been looked after beautifully by the young lass who has been serving us, so I tip her. An average Brit doing 10% of about $190, I hand the lass a $20 bill.

She looks at my hand in confusion, looks shocked, and playfully bangs my shoulder. I’ve upset a balance…

Apparently, the rules on tipping at different here. Where as I tip 10% for someone who has looked after me (and the Merkins tip 10% for everything and 15-20% for someone who has done well) New Zealand seems to take tipping to be a sign that the gods have shone on your experience and you would happily offer your first born as thanks for the service you have received…

It’s a mistake I was to make again whenever we have alcohol with our dinner. Needless to say, I made quite a few people uncomfortable…

We headed back to our room and planned our next day…

The question on everyone’s lips was – would tomorrow contain as many ellipses as today…?

View larger map

If, of course, you don’t think it’s impressive, don’t bother. I’ve already said “Woo!” enough times to make up for you unimpressed types.

Right, moving on…

For reasons most (all) would associate with masochism, we decided to go play in the traffic again. Specifically, since every country claims that its roads grind to a halt, we decided to go play in rush hour traffic.

There was a small but significant hole in this theory – neither of us know what time rush hour is in Auckland. Working on the principle that evening commute seemed to be at about 5.30, we scoffed our scrambled egg breakfast and hit the main motorway at 8.15.

Most of you will know what a traffic jam is like… London, LA, Paris, Baldock… they’re all famous for their traffic jams. So too is Auckland. And it’s possible that Auckland traffic gets really horrific, but for us it was the most relaxed city gridlock we’d ever seen, with the main motorway flowing smoothly enough that we were on the harbour bridge before we realised we’d driven through the traffic…

The roads are something I’ve spent a lot of time talking about since we got back – the scenery, the length, the altitude, the terrifying corners – but first I want to talk about the motorway and how fecking sensible people are.

Under normal road conditions (as best I can fathom) Kiwi roads work like British ones: you get on; you travel in the right lane for your speed relative to other vehicles; you try and stay left. And that’s how it works when it’s quiet. When it gets busy, someone changes the wiring inside Kiwi drivers’ heads, and they seamlessly change driving styles. Suddenly the three lane motorway has turned into a marvellous contraption where lane 1 is for people leaving the motorway at the next junction (or joining it); lane 2 is for people who are planning on leaving in the next few junctions, but not this one; and lane 3 for people who are going some distance. I’m not even sure people were aware that they were doing it.

Traffic over the harbour bridge is also rather impressive. The bridge, when it was built, was just four lanes wide – four lanes of tarmac with no central divide. Ten years later, it was already handling many times the anticipated traffic load, so two more lanes were bolted on to either side of the bridge (if you trust Wiki, these Japanese made units are known as the “Nippon clip-ons”). The central four lanes have always had a ‘tidal’ lane system, where more lanes were given over to the heavier flow of traffic. Originally this was done with overhead lighting rigs telling you which lanes were open – nowadays it’s done with concrete barriers that are shuffled back and forth across the traffic by specialist rigs that pick the barriers up, redirect them down an s-shaped channel and dump them back down on the other side of the carriageway.

Does it show I’m a bit of an engineering nerd?

So, first stop on our second day was Army Bay. I’d like to suggest that there was some special reason for us going to Army Bay but, in reality, we were heading up the motorway and discovered the next bit was a toll road where you had to phone in your details within 24 hours to avoid punishment – rather like the congestion charge in London – and we turned off. Much of the holiday was like that actually – drive in a previously agreed direction, then turn off as and when we felt like it. It’s a strangely relaxing way to tour a country. You know that you aren’t going to see all the tourist sights you might have wanted to, but you get to see a lot of random stuff you would have otherwise missed. Like Army Bay.

Now, I have no idea how Army Bay got its name. What I do know is that the Kiwi Army apparently learnt a lot from the British Army, and decided that the incredibly scenic bit of land right next to it would be a perfect place to run around shouting bang and throwing bloody great lumps of metal at each other…

Army Bay rock pool, by GB

Army Bay beach

It’s another of those beaches that seem impossible to my British brain – crystal clear water, thick grained sand, rocks to wander across, trees for shade, and no other buggers around.

The trees fall into two categories – dead and sun bleached or gravity defying…

Dead tree on Army Bay

Knot of exposed tree roots

On the other side on the peninsula (which is, at this point, about quarter of a mile wide) are incredible views across clear water to a scale model of Auckland (1:1 as it happens) with, again, no obvious massive over development of land.

The sun gets hotter very quickly, and we’re suddenly aware that our pasty white legs aren’t covered in sun cream in the way that our arms and faces are. The sun is disarmingly evil and even I, who shuns sun cream whenever possible, am covering myself in the stuff. It’s the second day and already my yearly sun allergy is kicking off, leaving an itchy trail of red pinpricks down my arm.

So we decide to head off and investigate the old road back round the bay – the route that would have been taken before the bridge was built. Except, in a masterpiece of misunderstanding, we end up heading 15 miles to far north west towards Helensville.

This is beautiful country… agricultural land with mountains in sight; the sea just over the horizon; and a pace of life that’s slow to a fen-dweller. It’s my idea of heaven. As if anticipating my thoughts GB contradicts me – “I could never live here”. Why not? “I couldn’t live in Helen’s Ville. Jean’s Ville maybe…” Ah, sibling rivalry… there’s nothing like it.

Our aim, right now, is to find food. It’s gone lunchtime and my stomach is rumbling. The problem is that everywhere is smaller than our SatNav (and the road signs) imply. The town in 10K turns out to be a handful of houses and a closed pub. The beachside village turns out to be couple of holiday homes and a dozen hippies somehow surviving on sand that’s too hot to touch. The sprawling metropolis suddenly vanishes as the quiet suburb turns out to be the entire town. That’s how we drove through Helensville – while wondering if there’s somewhere to park up we run out of town and find ourselves back in open countryside.

Finally we stop. On the roadside. In a layby.

There’s no food here. There’s just another car, a small pile of broken glass, and a sign pointing down a footpath to Fairy Falls. At this point we’d not yet wised up to the wonderfully misleading nature of Kiwi tourist signs, so we decided that a wander down a shady path to a waterfall would be rather pleasant.

We learnt our lesson.

The rainforest we walked through was beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but it was clinging to the side of a hill. The signs said 40 minutes, so we decided to tackle the route. After 30 minutes walking down a slope that no-one from the plains of Cambridgeshire should be made to experience, we found a sign. 20 minutes to the falls. This was not a landscape where maths had any hold. The problem was that my knees were already aching – and so far we’d only walked down the slope.

Your intrepid explorer, by GB

Banishing all hopes of a nice little National Trust tea shop (and yes, I know how old that makes me sound) we turned our back on the falls and headed back towards the car. There are different estimates on how long it took to walk back. The signs claim it took 20 minutes. Some claim it took nearer to 45. Some claim it took a week and a half and a pack of pit ponies. I lean towards the latter. By the time we reached the top we were knackered, in pain, and wondering where our lunch and water had gone.

Onwards to Arataki.

The road we drove is a beautiful road called “Scenic Drive” despite the fact all you can see are trees, tarmac and black rubber snakes from where teenagers go to show off their mad driving skills. I mean “skillz”.

Arataki, however, is incredible…

View from Arataki, by GB

Here we met two large milkshakes, and a man called “Mike from London” – who came from Nottingham. We decided it was probably best not to ask.

Mike gave us a wonderful overview of what he, as a Brit, saw New Zealand to be. And that could, as he put it, be summed up by the word “easy”. We agreed. We’d have agreed even if he wasn’t feeding us free wafers as they came out of his ice cream cone making machine.

Mike was working the stand because someone else (a member of his staff possibly) had called in sick and he’d been lumbered with the job himself. But, if we were around tomorrow, he’d love to show us around. Sadly, we were planning on being on the road, so instead he told us to head off to Peha Piha, where there was a lion in the surf and the surfers all grew (and smoked) a huge amount of dope.

The Piha Lion

With a little imagination (or maybe a lot of that dope) you can see how the Peha Piha Lion got its name.

Sadly, hunger and annoying sunlight got to us, and we headed off towards our food, so I shall leave you with this – why is it that we are so insistent on serving battered cod as our national dish? It’s a boring fish that is being fished to dangerously low levels. It’s expensive too. Why don’t we eat haddock (a far superior fish, to my mind) or something just as dull but more populous, like Hake or Hoki?

Failing that, we could do as the Kiwis, and deep fry anything that comes out of the ocean. Our dinner that night was deep fried red snapper and chips. With the wreckage of the previous night’s salad we were stuffed on under £5 of the best fish and chips I’ve ever had…

We flew out from Birmingham International on Saturday night. We landed in Dubai Sunday morning, and took off two hours later for Brisbane. An hour layover and we’re on again, this time to Auckland. It’s nearly 30 hours later, we’ve had about 4 hours sleep and it’s now lunchtime Monday. The brain is no longer working.

Auckland Airport is a marvellous thing. Sure, Dubai terminal 3 is a magnificent structural phenomenon, with walls of glass and two Oases, but Auckland is full of Kiwis. Somehow it’s completely alien and completely at home. I mean, we step off the plane straight into an immigration queue – but it’s efficient. It’s like the twilight zone.

The various officials are happy too. Back in Australia the security staff all looked like they’d had exceptionally bad news and were waiting to take it out on someone (and later on in Birmingham we’d walk into a world full of automatons) but here the immigration guys joked with us about what we were doing. The biosecurity lass was even cooler – we ticked just about all the red boxes we could find on the biosecurity form (food, plant matter, hiking boots, animal contact, living on a farm, smuggling wood, liking Marmite) and she cheerfully worked down the list before telling us that we could go on our way.

Free, and into fresh clean New Zealand air. Surprisingly warm air. The Ford Mondeo we hired had air conditioning, so we did the British thing and wound the windows down instead…

20 minutes from the airport was our bed for the first three nights – the Grange Lodge Motel. Now, being British, we’d never been to a motel before and we had no idea what to expect – motels are where Americans live when they get thrown out of their apartments or need somewhere to go brew crystal meth in the coffee pot.

If you find yourself in need of a decent night’s kip in Auckland, give Pat & Bernie a try. A truly friendly welcome, a bloody comfy bed, and a studio style living/dining/cooking area. Most hotels I stay in are either horribly expensive (and not very good) or the predictable boxes of the big chains (and therefore expensive, not very good, and smaller than my room at Uni). This I’d have killed for at Uni. It was probably bigger than our first house…

The next day, we pry ourselves out of bed and go talk to Bernie. The night has been good to us, but apparently we were more travel weary than we felt – we now apparently look 15 years younger. Bernie clarifies a couple of points on NZ’s weird traffic rules and we head off shopping. Since shopping is ultimately boring, we’ll skip on to St Helier’s beach…

Look at that beach.

Now go back and look at it again.

That’s a sandy beach, on a Tuesday lunchtime, in a high 20s heat. It’s 10 minutes away from the centre of Auckland. So I ask you, “where are all the people?”

It’s actually a question we kept asking ourselves while we were away – why is this beautiful resource, which is readily available to everyone, not jammed solid with students, the unemployed, and the elderly? Can you imagine any beach in the UK being that empty? Now realise that the water is crystal clear instead of the brown sludge that you get on an English beach…

The reason, we realised, is that there are only 4 million Kiwis, so you could spread them evenly across every beautiful location, and there’d still be no-one on that beach. When you put a quarter of the population (of both islands) in Auckland, it leaves no-one else to visit the beauty in the other parts of the country. Except for gawking tourists…

We did what every well adjusted tourist does next – we went shopping.

Auckland CBD (the Central Business District – or city centre) is the busiest in the country and Queen Street is the busiest shopping street in the city. Now, I’ll admit that we were there on a Tuesday afternoon, but I’ve genuinely seen Cambridge busier on a Sunday. It’s partly an illusion because the pavements are nearly as wide as the carriageways and the shops supply welcoming shadows to shelter you from the sun, but you could still have dropped a dozen Oxford Street’s in there and had space to spare.

This is the old Ferry building in the docks. Pretty, isn’t it. I wish I could tell you more about it, but I was hot and tired and just thought it looked nice.

It was time to move on, so we decided to go play in the rush hour traffic – a strange exercise that we would attempt will alarming regularity. What we actually ended up doing was staging the first part of a 13 day torture exercise on our annoying Aussie sat-nav, Karen. Karen, you see, had been told to avoid motorways and u-turns at all costs, so driving the wrong way up a motorway was a surprisingly effective way to drive her insane. That Tuesday’s attempt took us over the harbour bridge to Devonport – the side of the bay that was, until the bridge, only accessible by ferryboat or 2 hour drive.

It’s an area full of nice houses, almost certainly full of well paid execs from the CBD. Cool breezes, big houses, lots of green and a view of the harbour. I wanted to stay there forever.

Sadly, my camera decided that focussing was not something it wanted to do (something connected to the polariser I was using) so the best photo I have is this stunning paparazzi snap of Jean…

We spent an hour or more sat there, staring at the Auckland skyline, watching the ferry bring weary workers home, and wondering how the commuter on a jet-ski would get it off the beach.

Part 2 : Army Bay; driving Karen mad; the Peha Lion; and Fairy Footsteps Falls.

I knew nothing about Blue John except that it’s only found in one valley in Derbyshire.

Except, that’s not entirely true. It’s like saying that a blue veiny cheese made in a Stilton style by a bloke in a shed in Somerset isn’t Stilton because it wasn’t made in the village of Stilton… Blue John is simply Fluorite that has been mined from one of the 15 recognised seems in the relevant valley of Derbyshire. An almost identical sample from a mine quarter of a mine away wouldn’t be Blue John purely because it was mined from the wrong valley.

A bowl mined from one valley might be worth £1000. The same bowl from a rock a valley over would be a tenth of that.

Somehow I’m not as impressed any more…