On to, and in, Murchison

17/11/12 - in Nelson
Turns out the kids I mentioned in the last post - boys and girls of a variety of ages, though mostly around the Intermediate level - are up from Christchurch to play in a touch rugby tournament.   They certainly brought plenty of life to the place which was pretty quiet the night before, and they seem well organised.  They're up and about early this morning: I thought there was no one around until I went to the toilet about 6.30 and discovered they were already up and running.  The walls in this place a surprisingly soundproof.

Yesterday afternoon we went for a long stroll/walk on the beach at Tahunanui.  It's glorious: a huge expanse that gets covered with the tide when it comes in, and warm water and sunshine streaming down on it all.  You can see why people like the place.  Nelson seems to have grown hugely since we were last here, but that might be just my view of it.  It's certainly not a little place.

We got some Soov from the chemist yesterday and that's certainly helped ease the itchiness of the mozzie bites.  We could hear one in the cabin just before we went to bed last night but Celia may have frightened it to death or even caught it in a mighty clap she gave!

We're off to Murchison today. Almost missed out on getting a place to stay until Celia discovered, on an iPad app she's got, that there was a place not listed in the AA book.  Hopefully the road isn't totally winding and hilly!


18/12/12 - in Murchison
Restless night after a not so wondrous day.  It rained on and off all the way to Murchison, and then rained more when we got here. Between times it would be quite warm and pleasant, and I actually went for a walk at one point looking for the river on the other side of the road and strangely forgetting that I'd just been looking at it with Celia at the back of the camp!  I'd missed noting the bridge we came over, somehow.

She wasn't in the best of states: the midges are everywhere here and she got very agitated because she was so sure they were all out to bite her, after all the trouble she'd had with the bites she'd got in Picton.  Her ankles are still swollen, and she wants to be at home now, so everything combined to make her feel miserable for a while. The camp isn't very good considering what we're paying for it (only five dollars less than the very good cabin in Nelson) and the so-called double bed in the room is literally just a built in bunk that Celia immediately knew wouldn't be comfortable for the two of us.  So we brought one of the air beds in and she slept on that.  It was stuck in the corner under the little shelf where the cutlery and electric jug is.  The kitchen we used was okay, but whether they're doing some overhauling of it or what I don't know, but it's almost bare of utensils. The jug in it was so foul looking inside that we couldn't bear to use it.  It reminded us of the one in London that had been peed in, though that obviously wasn't the problem with it.*  Still, there's a quite large lounge area and we sat and watched a repeat of Doc Martin and read a bit. Ironically, there's a notice in the office that you should check out the place before you pay as no refunds will be given.  I'm not sure how you'd do that, and what your alternative would be anyway!

The place is geared up for people doing kayaking, and there are wet suits hanging everywhere, and a lot of young people about. Not that we saw them much: they were either out kayaking or cooking in the other kitchen, which had pots and pans galore in shopping bags on the floor.  That might explain their absence in our kitchen.  The toilets, which are next to our cabin, are pretty good and look as though they've been built, or done up, recently.  I guess if you have a place like this you have to work on a bit at a time, depending on finances.  The problem is, as seemed to be the case in Kaikoura, if you let it run down too much people won't come at all and then you've got no money to work with.

We had pottered around in Nelson before we left.  There was a market with a lot of stalls that was worth wandering around, though it was raining lightly, and I went up to the Cathedral to have a look. It's in a beautiful setting, a well-established garden on the hillside, and that's a delight, but the cathedral itself seems rather stark to me, and lacking in much warmth.  The great bell tower is square and open, so you can see the bells, but has a skeletal feel about it, and the building, while imposing, doesn't invite you in.  There was a short-haired cat wandering around inside, a friendly creature, which I thought must have belonged, but neither of the two women doing the flowers knew where it came from, and one of them was shooing it away from the altar, and asking me what it was doing there.


We've booked to go to Hanmer Springs today, though I'm not much looking forward to the drive.  The one to Murchison was a bit winding and hilly but not as bad as the Blenheim to Nelson one; today's drive may be much the same it seems.

*Curiously enough I don't seem to have mentioned the jug/kettle that had been peed in, in London, in the posts I wrote at the time. We'd been in this hovel of a room for three days right near the end of our five month trip, and hadn't used the kettle for one reason or another - probably because the room wasn't pleasant just to sit around in, and we'd eaten out all the time.  On the last night I went to fill it up with water, opened it, and discovered someone had used it for a toilet at some point.  We'd paid £40 pounds for this room, with breakfast in the cafe downstairs included.  That was around $120NZ at the time.  Phenomenal rip off.

Nelson, tents and beach

15/11/12
Absolutely hot day and consequently quite exhausting in the car.  We said goodbye to the noisy trucks and cars going over the bridge and have had them replaced here in Nelson by an aeroplane leaving the airport every half hour or so.  Surprisingly it's not as noisy as it was in Blenheim.

Picton: Sounds and boats.  Difficult to capture the
beauty of this harbour on film. 

The trip to Picton was fine and easy and took less than half an hour.  We wandered around for a while checking it out, enjoying the water and the boats - the Interislander in her berth - and the sunshine.  Found a secondhand shop that also sold antiques and it had a huge range of stuff from all sorts of vintages.  Bought a potato masher for a dollar, since we discovered last night that along with the lack of potatoes we didn't have a masher either.  Tempted by some other things, including the bus outside the building that was offered as a trade-in - it was fitted out as a campervan - but managed to control ourselves.  Also found a secondhand bookshop, a very good done, and finished up buying an Ian Rankin that I don't think I've read: Exit Music.  I think it was supposed to be the last Rebus book, but the most recent book by Rankin brings Rebus out of retirement, and also includes the characters from the two Complaints books, who, curiously, come across as different characters in this new book - it's like they're seen as different because we're seeing them through Rebus' eyes.  Consequently we get very little insight into Malcolm Fox in this new book.  I had a bit of a discussion with the proprietor of the bookshop about the way paper books are being taken over by electronic versions; naturally he wasn't very impressed by the latter and thought a monopoly would eventuate and cut lots of people out.  However I think it's a transition time, like it or not, and we'll have to live with it somehow. Books as such don't seem to be going out of fashion as yet.  There was a good secondhand bookshop n Blenheim as well as a very good new books bookshop, staffed by at least five people.

We checked at the info place about just how hilly and winding the Queen Charlotte road was and, on the basis of what they said, decided it was too hilly.  Just as well, as the road from Havelock to Nelson was not at all pleasant to drive on.  Up to Havelock it was fine, running along through a lovely valley (the Rai Valley, I think?) but a few miles after Havelock it climbed up into the mountains.  That wasn't too much of a problem - it was the endless trip downhill again that nearly drove us crazy with its constant twists and turns, and with trying to keep the car from going too fast.  With all the weight on board I don't much trust the brakes to hold us if we have a problem.  When we were coming back from Christchurch after our last trip there, and Celia was driving, the car was doing an awful shuddering thing as we came down the Kilmog, which made Celia very nervous (not to mention me!)

We stopped off in Havelock for lunch near the water, and were joined by a very fluffy cat who just sat beside us without demanding anything, in spite of the fact that we were eating sardines (not on toast, but on pita bread - we'd run out of ordinary bread).

Tahuna Beach, Tahunanui.  You can just see some of the
dozen or so surf kites people were practicing with.

Anyway after our long trip down the neverending hill, we got to Nelson - and began to breath normally again.  We'd decided to stay at the Tahuna Beach motor camp, which turns out to be 54 acres of campervans, tents, cabins, motels and whatever, all within spitting distance of the sea.  It's a good place but when we tried to get the tent up, the wind just wouldn't let us.  We decided to try a different tent site since we were told it didn't matter which site we used but while that was a little less windy, we still had enormous trouble getting the tent to sit properly. The front kept blowing inwards and in general not looking right.  The rest was okay, but the area round the door bent inwards.  Turned out that one of the rods had split badly, so it's not surprising that it wouldn't take the strain.  Celia had already repaired another one on site and we'd got that in place - she'd repaired several split ones before left home - bit in the end the tent was just plain wonky and was going to get wonkier.  We capitulated and hired a cabin instead, which meant taking the tent down again.  At least that was a much quicker job than the two attempts we'd made to get it up!   The cabin is a standard one but in fact is better than the so-called de luxe one we had in Kaikoura.  It doesn't have a sink, which was an advantage at the other place, but it has a fridge and a telly.  It would sleep four if necessary, so we have a choice of beds.

Celia's happy to start heading home after we've been here for a couple of nights.  She's over tenting for the time being, and in fact, given the relative price of the cabins, it's not worth all the hefting and heaving and shoving and back-breaking that the tent takes to get up, just to save a few dollars.  She'd had plans about going into more remote camp sites, like the DOC ones, but that idea went west after we'd been at Waitaki Waters, and had spent some time at Marfells Beach.  I think she's realised that we're getting a bit past all the hassles of camping, although she enjoys cooking on her gas stove - making pikelets on it near Glentunnel and cooking eggs on the side of the road near Makikihi were both highlights.

Now we have to figure out how to get home without too many mountain roads like the one we went on today.  Looks like we can avoid going back to Blenheim, by going down through the middle of the island but I think that road is a winding as well.  Anyway, we'll see how it goes.  We can stop between here and Christchurch and again between Christchurch and Dunedin if we want.   That'll take us through the weekend and into next  week and that'll be enough.   We'll probably stop overnight with my daughter and her family on the way back as well.

Kaikoura, rain and more

12/11/12

At present sitting in a rest spot about 18 km south of Cheviot.  Celia's reading her Kindle and I've just been for a bit of a walk, first in a small plantation off the side of the road and then down by the river -  the Greta - which is flowing past at great speed, and is quite extensive in breadth.  There's a large chicken [it was probably a cockerel] wandering around in the rest area by the fence; it doesn't seem to have any connection with the place and yet seems quite at home.

Celia and I left the house yesterday morning about ten am with rough plans to find a church and go to a service before we went to the lunch for Heather at 12.30, but we didn't find a church and in the end sat in the Northlands mall and did another of those puzzles we got in Geraldine.  After a false start we managed to do it before we went to the lunch, but last night, trying to do one at home was just impossible.  My son-in-law figured out the first puzzle and I finished it after having got a number off him to get me started, but the second one I tried was beyond me.  It didn't help that the TV was showing some Ken Follett story -we got through two episodes on SoHo - and it was hard to concentrate.  The story was about one of the King Edwards, circa 1372, and involved a very large cast with graphic brutality throughout and rapes (at least two) and hangings and a spectacular bridge collapse with hundreds of extras and two sinister murders by one member of the cast (she disposed of her sister-in-law and her brother at different times) and monks who shouldn't have been in the monastery and more.  Not ideal viewing, really.

The lunch for Heather was great; there wasn't a large number of people there, and they were all family members: four adult siblings belonging to her sister and her husband, and two of the four adult boys belonging to her brother and his wife.  There were four grandchildren running around as well, and that was it - apart from us, the only non-family members.  It was quite a full-on day people-wise.  We're quite glad to have a bit of space today!  We'll see our kids all again at Christmas and that's not far away.

Later on the same day, at Kaikoura.  We decided in the end to hire a cabin tonight.  It's been raining on and off all day and it rained very heavily overnight in Christchurch, and things here are also pretty damp.  Anyway, this makes a nice change and we'll get back to tenting when it's drier.  The camp site is a bit run down compared to the other two, but the 'de luxe' cabin we've got (at the standard rate) is fine and has a toaster and jug and crockery and cutlery.  What more could you need?  The double bed is comfortable too...!


13/11/12
Celia actually found the bed quite hard, and unfortunately we'd put both the big quilt on over us and a quilt that was supplied which meant we got hot and then Celia got up at two to go to the loo and that woke me and from then on I just seemed to doze and sleep fitfully.  We hadn't gone to bed till reasonably late and we should have been tired but at the moment nothing seems to help when it comes to sleeping right through the night.  The place overall wasn't up to much and we only saw one other woman staying there - and she seemed to retire early; her curtains were drawn by about six pm.  Two Indians or Pakistanis who seem to be staying there long term came home in the middle of the evening and watched a violent movie in the cabin next door.  There was a lot of shooting and shouting and screaming and what sounded like a prolonged rape scene with the woman screaming endlessly.  The walls between the de luxe units don't muffle very much.  It continued to rain through the night and things were very wet this morning.  But it finally cleared by the time we got moving.

We spent quite a lot of time this morning in Kaikoura down where the Whale Watch boats leave from - it's all very new and tidy - and talked to a young man who was whitebaiting successfully.  Celia got her rod out but didn't catch anything more than seaweed.   She's out fishing again now at a place called Marfells Beach.  There's a Department of Conservation site here and we came down to see what it looked like as a possible place to stay but while it's a nice enough beach and there's room to camp, we've decided to go onto Blenheim.  We've come to the conclusion that camp sites in towns rather than out of them are probably what suit us best. (We're townies at heart.) We walked and drove round Kaikoura last night and this morning: there's a great deal more to it than you first think and it's obviously going ahead at great guns.


Marfells Beach is just past a place called Ward where there doesn't seem to be much more than a very good cafe, but apparently there's a reasonable population somewhere handy as the Lake Grassmere salt works employ quite a lot of people - we passed them after we'd left the beach.  We also stopped off at a church in the middle of nowhere called St Oswald's, but it has beautiful, though traditional, stained glass in every window - unlike the church in Cheviot which boasted of its stained glass yet they seemed to consist of nothing more than coloured panels!  Cheviot's church wasn't open, but this one, way out in the country, had a key in the door!  The little graveyard behind it, with only about six grave sites, is beautifully set, with the sea in the distance, and a lovely overhanging tree.

I'm reading the latest Ian Rankin in the car while Celia's still fishing so there's no rush to move off.

3rd Holiday Post

11th Nov, 2012

I missed writing anything for a couple of days because we were at my number three daughter's place, with her family.

We got up on Friday morning - still in Geraldine at that stage - and there was a drip coming off the tent in the front section, though it wasn't raining.  Turned out it was moisture running off the upper part of the door opening.  When my head touched the roof the condensation began to drip as well.  Celia was concerned about what it would be like in the rain, which is forecast for next week, but we dried the tent out in the sun in the end, and we'll have to see how it all works out.

We had breakfast in the camp kitchen and talked for some time to a young man from Idaho who is cycling around the country for three months.  He was going to Fairlie that day, a mere 80 kilometres.  Later in the day I spoke to a bloke who works for one of the electricity companies.  He was lying on the pebble shore in the Rakaia Gorge having his lunch.  He didn't think that long cycling days like that we're much of an idea since you had your head down all the time and didn't see much.  Apart from being exhausted by the time you got to your destination.  Anyway the young man had obviously been enjoying the trip.  He works in IT so can take three - or it might have been five months - off to tour.

After leaving Geraldine we weren't entirely sure that we'd taken the right road - we wanted the scenic route that goes through Glentunnel - but while we were stopped on the side of the road admiring the wonderful mountains, in the near distance, presumably the Alps, a man in his thirties drove up and stopped to ask if everything was all right. He assured us we were on the right track and that we could get petrol in Mayfield, which turned out to be only up the road.  I'd been a bit concerned that we wouldn't make it before we found a petrol station, having forgot to get petrol in Geraldine, so I was grateful for his concern.

After getting petrol in Mayfield, we stopped outside the village's Memorial Hall for a cup of tea, under the shade of an ancient tree - it was a wonderfully hot day - and Celia went for a trek to find the toilets. Though advertised as being close by this turned out to be much more difficult than the sign suggested.

A photo of the Rakaia Gorge as you approach it from the South.
It's a bit hard to get the whole picture of it; as usual I thought I'd
taken more photos than I had!

Our next stop was the Rakaia Gorge itself but Celia didn't feel much like walking at that point because it was so hot and her ankles had swollen somewhat with the heat and she was rather weary - neither of us have been sleeping well: at Geraldine the lights are kept on in the camping grounds all night and there's no real darkness as such. And, as I mentioned previously, the birds like to start singing loudly around 5 am. Anyway the Gorge was a beautiful vast open area with a surprising section of natural erosion where the cliffs had fallen away (the electricity worker said they'd been like that as long as he could remember though they looked like a relatively new scar).  Two bridges cross the two streams of the river coming into the Gorge, along with various other trickling creeks. Not much shelter there so we moved on, and anyway we couldn't light the gas there to make our lunch because of fire restrictions.  We eventually stopped on the south side of Glentunnel in a still unsheltered rest area, got the gas cooker out and made pikelets.   We used the golden syrup packs for flavour that we'd got when all the family went to MacDonald's a couple of weeks ago when the Christchurch family were down in Dunedin.  (One of these packs, the one that got left over, decided to trickle all over the inside of a bag of soups and meat flavourings, leaving everything sticky as.)  Drove on towards ChCh, passing my daughter's old place in Glentunnel, stopped for an icecream and milkshake in Darfield, and drove to my daughter's.  Greeted effusively by the kids and it was full on ever after!

Yesterday we took them out twice because, in part, my daughter had her first University exam for this semester, and in part because it was less exhausting outside than in!  Went to the Botanical Gardens which neither of us had ever been in much before and had a lovely open air time.  We didn't have the smallest of the three with us at that point because he went off to a birthday party with his dad, but on the second trip out, to the park along near their house, we had him as well.  He's as cuddly and smiley as he was in Dunedin, and talks full bore.  His sister, the middle child, who's only five and three quarters, is like a seven or eight year old...very sharp and bright.  Her big brother's no slouch either, so it's like being a house of super brains.  Celia showed my daughter's partner the book we'd got in Geraldine but even he was stumped by the first puzzle in it, although he picked up the idea of the puzzles straight away, as you'd expect him to do, and was soon doing them with ease.

We met up with our friend Heather for a meal last night at the Westfield mall in Riccarton, along with a couple from Dunedin who were up for a weekend of celebrations at their old church; it didn't seem as though they were having much celebration, though; all a bit dry by the sound of things.  Good to catch up with Heather; we'll see her again today for a family lunch celebrating her 60th birthday.  From there we went to see our dearest friends, people who used to live in Dunedin, but haven't done for many years. Within minutes of arriving we found ourselves invited to babysit their house at Christmas, which we were happy to do.  Their daughter arrived for a while with all four of her kids, which quickly demolished any sense of tidiness around the place, and then we watched an episode of Doc Martin on TV One. It turned out to be one we'd all watched on Prime previously, but proved surprisingly re-viewable.  Some viewing of photos from the last overseas trip and then back to my daughter's.

October 09 holiday - first post

I've just introduced this latest holiday on my main blog- it gives a bit of background as to why we were on holiday in the first place.

We both flew to Wellington on Wednesday the 21st - on separate planes. This had come about because when we were booking online a few months ago, we had to book separately, because my wife was doing a multi-stop and I was only doing a return trip. Consequently, Air NZ's online system couldn't somehow see the point of putting us both on the same outward flight - or perhaps it was trying to give us the cheapest options - and we took 'em!

We actually asked the guy at the desk if we could be put on the same flight, but he'd had something unpleasant for breakfast, apparently, and didn't even give the idea the time of day. (My wife later told me her flight was half empty.) I put my suitcase through, and my wife put her rucksack through (one of those we carted around Europe in 2007) and we assumed we'd meet up with them later. The rucksack had the items of food we'd brought (we were going to be staying in Youth Hostels) along with the toiletries and some clothing, and a few other odds and ends.

She duly got on her plane - the one which would stop in Christchurch, and then arrive almost at the same time as mine, which left an hour later (!) - and I sat down and waited until my own flight left. Officially it took off late - by about ten minutes - but I still managed to arrive only minutes later than my wife, who was standing by the baggage carrel when I got there - waiting for her knapsack to arrive.

And then we both waited. My suitcase came through, but no knapsack. Finally a young man from the baggage section came over to see if everything was all right. No knapsack. Did lots of tapping on his keyboard, couldn't find why it had gone awol. Assured us that it would probably be on the next flight out of Christchurch, and if so, he'd have it sent round to the Youth Hostel.

We went to get the hire car; they came and picked us up and took us to their base, and then it was off into the Wellington traffic, using my wife's recently acquired iPhone with its GPS application.

This one got the name Frankie (his predecessor in England had been Malvina), and in general he was pretty good at guiding us around the country. I'll talk about the Hostel in another post, and finish off what happened about the knapsack.

I rang the baggage people back later in the afternoon as there'd still been no sign of the pack - and no word from them. Of course, I got someone else and we had to start all over again. Still no sign. Finally, about 10 pm that night they rang: still no sign.

We had had to get some more food in (fortunately the Hostel is across the road from a New World supermarket), and we had to get some more toiletries as well. Next day still no news, and finally, late on the second night in Wellington, we got a call: the bag had gone to Auckland and then onto Napier!

They were merrily chirping on about getting it sent back to Wellington when I informed them that we were leaving for Napier in the morning, and would appreciate that they didn't start sending it around the country again. So finally we met up with our food and toiletries and odds and ends in Napier when we arrived - at the youth hostel there. The boiled eggs weren't too healthy, but the cheese survived, as did the margarine and the rest of the items.

The joys of travelling. [Photos of this trip are on a smart card in Auckland at the moment; my wife took them with her when we split after our return trip to Wellington, so they may get added in later. The photo here was taken by Stephanie Anne (flickr.com) and shows a bed/room similar to the ones we had in the Wellington YHA.]

The joys of owning a car in England

You’ll no doubt remember that we bought a car for the time we’ve been in England. It’s been great, a Peugeot 306 XR, and we’ve done a lot of mileage in it. It’s also been very economical in terms of petrol, probably a lot more economical than our Mitsubishi Chariot at home.

However, we had to pay for its annual registration last month - £63.00 – which works out to about the same as we’d pay in NZ. But we also had to get an MOT – the equivalent of the NZ Warrant of Fitness – and this has been a bit of a shock.

I’m not sure what the current cost of getting a WOF in NZ is. (This is a post full of acronyms, isn’t it?). I don’t think it can be more than $40 or so. That would be the equivalent of around £14.85 in British money. Here, however, the cost for the MOT is £50.35 (goodness knows what the 35p is there for – it’s like the sign in the Italian subways, where they would charge you 50 euros and 5 cents if you didn’t have a ticket). That’s about $135NZ. Good grief.

Worse, because there were a couple of things wrong with the car (two of them utterly minor, and one to do with the brake pads) we had to have some work done on it. This cost another £80 – or $215NZ.

And then, because the people who’d tested the car had to do a ‘partial re-test’ they charged us again: another £25.13, making the total for the MOT about $200NZ. How on earth that can be justified is anyone’s guess. (I happened to look up this garage when I was trying to find their phone number the other day, and obviously I’m not the only customer who hasn’t been satisfied with them. Have a look at the comments section.)

So in the last couple of months our great wee car has cost us over £200, which has seriously reduced our bank account. We’re now heading towards almost nothing in it – gulp! – and we’ve still got another week here, as well as staying two days in Korea. It reminds me of a time when I was young man and went to Australia to see if I could work there as a repetiteur (I’d already worked professionally at the job in NZ). I didn’t get any work, and after a month of swanning around, came home, only to realise when I flew into Christchurch, that I didn’t actually have any money to get the train home to Dunedin. Fortunately the lady I was staying overnight with in Christchurch coughed up the readies, and I was able to repay her later (no doubt out of my mother’s money, since I didn’t have a job to come back to either!)

Checking out prices online

Just having some fun playing with the HotelReservations.com site. I began by looking at Hotel Reservations on their own. You can put in a place name and the site will skip off and find you a choice of hotels (and other facilities) within seconds. Even though USA was on the page, I put Auckland in, and it was quite happy to find Auckland, NZ. Some of the room prices were a bit out of my reach, but that’s okay - at this point I don’t actually want to stay in Auckland, even though my daughter has moved there recently, and taken her man and their two children (our grandchildren) with her.
But we have considered going on the Continent for two or three weeks, say in October, so I put Florence in as a search. I hadn’t realised there were five places called Florence in the USA, one in Alabama, one in Arizona, one in Kentucky, one in Oregon, and one in SC. It’ll come to me in a minute which state that is! Ah, South Carolina?
In spite of the wealth of US Florences, the first Florence to come up was Italy‘s, which is where I was intending to look. So that was a plus. Clever site.
The site does vacation rentals as well as hotels (and flights, cars, package deals), so I checked out NZ for that, too. Up came Auckland, Queenstown, Wellington, Christchurch. Pretty good, though again things are on the pricey side. Maybe this site doesn’t look at more economic possibilities?
Thought I might as well have a look at the flights option, as this is something we’ve been checking out quite a bit online. And it’s usually not easy. However, apart from checking which of the several London airports I wanted to fly from, it found a possible flight very quickly. Though at US$10,683.40, it might be a bit beyond our budget! I went back to check that I hadn’t put business class in the options, but the only option was economy/coach. Obviously there might be a cheaper flight available: £5,339.80 or NZ$14,621.95 for one return flight to a place that’s not that far away from here, seems just a bit over the top.
However, one interesting thing that did turn up in the flight options, was this: people 62 years old and over can obviously go for a better price. Finally my age gives me some benefits! (Actually, if I want to travel by bus from Norwich to a large number of destinations, I can go free, because of my age.)

Thetford

We went to Thetford today, which apparently used to be the chief town in Norfolk. It isn’t any more, and though it has the usual churches built in 1100 and such, it didn’t strike either of us as very interesting a town. Maybe we didn’t see enough of it. However we did find out that the Dad’s Army series was partly filmed there, that Thomas Paine the great political pamphleteer was born there, and that the place was burnt to the ground by some Viking whose name I’ve now forgotten.

We bought ourselves a GPS system today, (which was why we were in Thetford in the first place), one that’s a bit more user-friendly and that we can also use when we go back to New Zealand. It’ll help in those awful cities - Christchurch and Auckland - where we can never find our way around.

Thetford also turned out to be full of Eastern Europeans and Portuguese (amongst others), people who are there to work at jobs that Brits are no longer doing, but who, by all accounts, may not be very well off. I’m only hearing about it secondhand, so I don’t know the details, but the number of foreign-speaking people walking the streets of Thetford was rather high.