20th November – Puriri Bay

We woke up to yet more rain and a film of glue on the rear of the car from last night’s fun. Feeling guilty after pigging-out, we psyched ourselves up for a soggy jog. Matt was straight out there but I took a bit longer. Spotting some dolphins cruising and leaping through the water helped give me a happy boost though.

Running alone on a seemingly endless stretch of sunny beach with barely anyone around is very liberating. Running backwards and forwards down a 250m stretch of pebbly sand in constant view of everyone parked looking out to sea is not so much. It isn't quite as easy to stay motivated when you have to cover the same ground 24 times and everyone is looking at you like you’re insane but at least the rain kept us cool.

I’m not sure what the deal is with having campsites with freezing cold showers that don’t have a roof. It was kinda fun yesterday with the sun shining down as I held by breathe and tried not to squeal. Getting dry today in today’s weather was a bit more of a challenge.

We waited a while to see if it would brighten up so we could go for a walk but there was no sign of getting a break. We passed the time watching half the campsite trying to remove an oversized camper that had got stuck in the mud. We would have offered to help but there were so many people already running back and forth to the beach collecting buckets of sand, wielding spades or standing looking pensive with their hands on their hips that we would have been superfluous.

We decided to see if we could drive to find the sun and took the windy road to Russell - the first European settlement in NZ and formerly described by Charles Darwin in 1835 to be full of the ‘refuse of society’.

In actual fact, Russell was very much like a Derbyshire village: mostly populated with shops selling expensive ceramics, over-the-top handbags and hand-made jewellery.

We took a walk up to Maiki, Flagstaff Road where Hone Heke chopped down the flagpole 4 times in protest of the British rule. On a clear day, the views over the bay would have been fabulous.

The rest of the afternoon was filled with several hours of to-ing and fro-ing from the pharmacy trying to get my now knee medication sorted out. The people at the doctor’s surgery were incredibly helpful but the pharmacy ladies were a little bit put-out by the whole process. I eventually left with a bulky selection of medication which they had refused to put it bottles because they ‘had to stay in the original packaging’ for customs, despite the fact that the tiny little pills of codeine were the only really questionable medication and they had managed to bottle those. They also only gave me enough pain-relief for 10 days so now have to go through all the rigmarole again.

I was cheered up by the car ferry though. We followed the road to Okiato, where it just disappeared into the sea. We waited for a few minutes for the boat to arrive, drove on to it and were in Opua in just a few minutes. It was so cool to be bobbing along in the sea in our car that I couldn't help wishing it was a little bit further.

We couldn’t resist a quick detour from Waitangi to Shippeys – an awesome fish and chip shop on a 19^th Century ship with proper sails and everything. We sat on board, listening to a guy perform an acoustic set and munching on deep sea bass, fresh from the ocean. Upstairs was open-plan with clear side shelters that could be rolled up on a nice day and downstairs was cosy and reminded me of an old country pub. Has the sun been shining I’m sure we could have been tempted to stay for a beer or two and watch the sun set but we had some fancy toilets to go see and so cracked on instead.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser was an Austrian eco-architect who spent some years living near Kawakawa and had been commissioned to design their public conveniences. They were meant to be quite a sight and so we stopped for a look-see. They were actually very lovely if not a little bizarre. Made from recycled mosaic and glass wine bottles with an elaborate roof-top garden, they looked very out of place in amongst bargain shops and opposite the chicken and chip vendor. They reminded me of the Gaudi structures in Barcelona, only in a more obscure setting.

We finished off a mostly unremarkable day by driving to Forest Fields basic DOC site where we passed a pretty unremarkable evening by a dirty-looking river.