Castlecliff, Wanganui, Marton

Saturday 20th October
4 days of catching up to do on the blog! 3 games of golf in that time as there is more rain and wind predicted for the next 5 days. Still very windy on the courses but when we had less yesterday I realised that I can no longer blame the wind for all the shots that go awry as there was no improvement in my score at all!
We played at Castlecliff, the beach out of Wanganui on Wednesday after sleeping there the night. I wished I had taken a photo of the electrical boards that we tried to connect to - the first one was the worst with a huge birds nest, the cover from the mains being under the birds nest and there were exposed wires galore. Needless to say none of the 8 or so connectors worked. We found another board that did have some workable connectors on it, but again it was in a poor electrical state. I hope they fix them before they get too many summer golfers staying.

Wednesday night we returned to our nice electrically safe camping spot at the RSA in Wanganui and on Thursday morning headed to Marton where all my 3 brothers live, 2 of them, Robin (Bob) and Rodger, still on their farms. We arrived at Peters first and, seeing it was lunchtime, took some fresh whitebait (river gold!) to fritterise for him as a treat. It reminds us of our childhood as our mother was an avid whitebaiter and we have always loved them. It was my lovely sister, Susan, who used to pick all the eyes out before she ate them.
We spent the night at Robin and Judys and Judy cooked a lovely dinner for which Rodger and Peter joined us. Margaret wasn't well unfortunately so we will catch up with her another time.

Len was almost tempted to try some tractor work on the farm but Rodger's suggestion of a game of golf (what? again you say?!) on Friday won the day and we played at the Rangitikel course which is out of Bulls.

We stayed at Robin & Judy's again last night - it is so cosy in their house with the big fire going - and this morning we joined Rodger again for a game on his home course of Marton where my mother also used to play. it's a course we love playing on as well - the many cows which line the whole fence along one of the fairways go crazy with all their roaring, mooing and applauding and carefully watch each shot to see how they should react as spectators. And then there are all the little fantails flitting around you as you try to take your shot. On fairway No 2 there is a magic tree - when Rodger (whose always looking for a bargain) hit his ball into it, 2 balls dropped out! He'll probably try that again next week! Certainly a great course.
We are now off to Rodgers where we'll have dinner and park on the drive for the night. Len has just deposited our old sattelite receiver in a roadside bin, along with the instruction manual in case someone needy finds it. It was the size of a telephone book and our new one is the size of a cellphone which Len is very pleased about - less space and less weight!