Whangamata to Auckland 21st April

With the very heavy rain over the weekend threatening to continue on Sunday we were keeping a close eye on the weather as we set off from Tauranga that day on our Northland exploration via Whangamata and Auckland. Fortunately we left most of the rain behind us though it did apparently throw a lot more down in Tauranga that evening.
We arrived at our friends, Jan and Doug's, lovely rural property overlooking the Coromandel Coast north of Whangamata in time to join them and their friends, Maureen and Colin for a lovely lunch made mostly from their own produce. After lots of catch-up chatter and a couple of wines we headed down the road to a neighbouring property to collect some of the abundant mushrooms that have sprung up from all the rain and warm weather. Great childhood memories revived for me with this as at primary school age Peter and I used to make good pocket money from boxing up the mushrooms we collected on the farm (apart from the ones the family ate) and sending them off on the train to Turners & Growers in Wellington. It was pretty exciting when the cheques arrived in the mail even after the freight had been deducted.

Not mushroom left in those receptacles!

We love field mushrooms, barely bothering with the tasteless supermarket version, so it was wonderful to collect more than a big bucketful which we were also able to share with Jacki & Tim, and my friend, Sue in Auckland. Thankyou Jan and Doug! Since then we have enjoyed mushrooms and bacon, mushroom risotto and mushroom soup of which I still have some in the freezer for another day.

Usually when we have been staying at friends we still sleep in our bus where we are very cosy and it is easier all round but one of the bedrooms at Jan and Dougs has our name on it so I enjoyed the luxury of being able to get out of their comfortable bed without climbing over Len first and it is nice to open the curtains in the morning and watch the rabbits and the quail through the full length windows.

Monday morning we headed straight for Auckland as we don't want to run out of time in the winterless North - we can explore places closer to home at another time. Once through Auckland we can start to take our time again.
First stop in Auckland was to visit my old school-friend, Sue, who is in the middle of moving house and trying to work out what to do with everything now she is downsizing. We weren't much help as we couldn't take anything off her apart from some teabags and magazines - we can only cope with small disposable things! It was nice to catch up with a wine in hand before we moved on to my nieces, Jacki and Tims at Pt Chev, where we had already booked a night outside their house. It was great as it felt like ages since we had seen them with having been on the road now for 7 months and again their 3 children now have a few more inches between them. We were spoilt with freshly cooked snapper for dinner and Len is looking forward to using his own new surfcasting rod which he bought in Tauranga.
I've been forgetting to get the camera out so we're a bit short of photos - darn!!