Wairarapa to Hawkes Bay

Farewelled Masterton heading north through lovely (very dry) rural New Zealand, arriving at Alfredton Domain for the night. Passed through areas settled by the Scandanavians back in the 1800's - lovely old churches with a trident on the steeple.
Alfredton once a thriving little town now consists of a very tidy rural school, community centre, less than half a dozen homes, and of course! a well kept cemetery.

Ekatahuna for lunch

The Domain had an active horse & tennis club with their renovated club rooms and storage sheds over the domain. No sign of anyone while we were there though.
After our 5 minute walk through the whole town in the morning, we continued on through to Herbertville. We had been through here 3 years ago and spotted freedom camping at the end of the beach after obtaining permission from the farmer (it took nearly an hour to find the farmer and watch him selecting sheep to sell with a stockman).
The weather had closed in with heavy cloud but it was lovely to be back by the sea once again after our time inland by rivers. Had a lovely big walk along the beach, finally got cell coverage at the township end to ring Joan (Bills mum) for her 83rd birthday, and to get the good news of my niece in Australia's engagement - congratulations Abbey & Ben. (Cell coverage is very limited throughout country NZ but Bill who is on Skinny (using the Telecom network) certainly has the better coverage than my 2 Degrees (Vodafone network), but occasionally I have the coverage, so it is good to have the two networks covered).
From Herbertville we continued back inland to head north again travelling through a lot of small towns. There are a lot of old pubs in these towns up for sale for any of you looking for a change in lifestyle. Bet they are cheap! Only little problem that would appear to be is no customers!! One pub that was functioning well though was the Patangata Hotel where Bill met up with the publican to discuss some possible work

Moving sheep at Patangata

Unfortunately the job was too big and would have involved organising other contractors, but he came up with some other work at another property. While we hung around waiting on the owner to get home after work, we had a bike ride along the Tukituki River, where there was a lot of evidence of campers over the Christmas / summer break. Some campers still there. The day was getting on so arrangements were made for Saturday to meet up with the property owner and look at another renovation job, so we headed off out to the coast.

Kairakau Beach

Kairakau Beach we had stayed at 5 years earlier (time flies doesn't it?) and it was pretty much the same - lovely stretch of beach, a tidy little beach settlement. Last time we managed to get out in the kayak but unfortunately it was a little windy for that this time. We had a chill out day the next day, Bill did a little bit of maintenance on the bus, we read our books, had walks (one of which went straight up the hill to limestone bluffs behind us. I almost made it to the top before I had to sit down and cling onto the hill! For those of you who know my fear of heights, this was an achievement for me. Bill continued on up and took the necessary photos).
The next morning, Saturday, it was time to head north to Napier, via Patangata again, checking out future work. This was unfortunately another no goer, too big a job with fishhooks, little resources available and limited transport (only our bus) to get required materials, it wasn't really an option. So we carried on north through extremely dry farmland to Napier