Not long now

Our excitement continues to grow

Flights, stopovers, side trips and boat now all sorted :-) 

We fly out 10 April return 30 October. Narrowboat adventure starts in Sheffield ANZAC DAY and returns to Sheffield 24 October. Our only definite itinerary for canal is we are heading towards Leeds to see family on the Leeds Liverpool Canal and the rest is a mystery. If anyone has any suggests or must see we would love to hear about them on our Gathering Information page.

Our countdown today is

• 30 days till Clara heads back to Uni in Hamilton to start the next stage of  her adventure -flatting, studying and working, she will have so much fun. We are looking forward to hearing about the house adventures - they all started off together in the Dorms and have already had many adventures.

• 70 days till Pete and I arrive in Dublin  - we have ten days in a campervan, a taster of Ireland for future trips maybe. We shall no doubt cover many many more miles than we can in a Narrowboat in ten days.

• 86 days till we join MUSN Grumble

I think we have nearly got our blog page sorted, this shall be our travel diary and you can follow by email. Also family and friends we have just connected my NZ mobile to viber so you are able to call us free if you also have viber while we are in the UK.
Free phone calls and messages worldwide, have you got viber it's free http://www.viber.com

Taranaki Road Trip

HAPPY NEW YEAR. 

WOW - January is disappearing fast, I had meant to practice with our Blog page but time has flown.

I have just returned from Taranaki. I took my great nephew home to Stratford (Malakhi is 3 and boy do you forget how active they are - below is our third stop on a 5 hour drive). Anyway taking him home was a great excuse for a road trip, my mate Glenis had never been to Taranaki so joined me.

Below are some photos of our trip. Thank you Ross and Jane for letting us stay at your beautiful home, best hotel and company in New Plymouth, the view from your place is stunning especially for happy hour.

View from Paritutu Centennial Park and Paritutu Rock you can climb to the top and was not on our wish list to do.  Makes a superb photo though J

Pukekura Park below is always worth the walk around.  TSB festival of lights is held yearly at Pukekura Park and should be put on your bucket list if you ever happen to be in New Plymouth in January http://festivaloflights.nz/ unfortunately we didn’t manage it this trip but I have previously and it is fantastic.
 

The road up to Dawson Falls on Mt Taranaki/Egmont is spectacular and so worth the drive as is the view. When we got to the bottom of the mountain the clouds finally lifted to give a great view of her.

I am home again and everything is back to normal - Pete and Clara enjoyed their 5 days without me and I enjoyed mine with some great friends. I do love a road trip without Pete as I can stop as many times as I want and even go off the beaten track which drives him crazy sometimes.

We are having a fantastic summer in NZ and are hoping UK is as good.
Our trip is on countdown – 79 days before we fly out to Dublin and 95 until we join MUSN Grumble.

I have just been out to the post box and our new Waterways World magazine has arrived, I need to read it quickly before Pete gets home.

This month’s waterway profile is Leeds to Liverpool which is definitely our first route J the rest will be a mystery tour. Any recommendations of must see sights on Canal in UK or Ireland would be greatly appreciated.