Plans?

It has to be said that we have never really been very good at making plans and sticking to them, we seem to always be making plans only to immediately change them. I guess you could say that we are fortunate to be able to be flexible, and can go with the flow!

We spent nearly a week at Ardmore, we had a few chores to attend to, people to see, that sort of thing. Most things were done fairly promptly and we also spent some time with Antony utilizing his wifi as Roy had some serious uploading to do. We are very limited with the amount of data we are able to access as the maximum monthly allowance is just 5GB of mobile data before we have to pay silly rates for any additional data. One day New Zealand telco companies will catch up with the rest of the world and we won’t be so limited. It makes for running a small business which is reliant on the Internet a tad, shall we say, challenging.

Sue & Pat joined us at Ardmore although they were busy chaps tripping around the countryside delivering their ute to Tauranga, as they had sold it, and off to Hellensville to pick up their new tow car then off to Hamilton to have the A-frame sorted. We successfully fulfilled our role as security guards for their van whilst they were away. Midway through the week we were contacted by friends Mark & Glynnis who just so happened to be in Auckland in their Motorhome. They were heading for the boat show on Friday and planned to come over to Ardmore to spend the night with us and do some catching up. Roy and Mark have known each other for some time now, as Mark used to work for Roy in the computer department at Kinleith in the late 60’s early 70’s. They spent a bit of time going hunting and fishing during that time, when they were younger – and fitter! We had previously caught up with them when they lived at Waiaua We spent a lovely afternoon and evening catching up with each other’s news before they headed off on Saturday morning.

We had other plans for Saturday, we went over to Steve & Leslie’s in Torbay for dinner and to spend the night with them. And again, another very enjoyable evening was had before we left on Sunday to attend to a bit of shopping at Albany. With the eftpos/credit cards getting a good airing and with most things ticked off our shopping list, it was back to the van at Ardmore and unpack the purchases.

Our plans at this stage were to head off on Monday to Whakapirau on the Kaipara Harbour which is where Jacky & Chris have purchased a property. We have been planning to go there for some weeks, but our plans keep changing. And this week was not going to be any different. It turns out that Antony is moving to a new flat next weekend and he asked if we could help him with the move, of course we can, we said, what’s another change in plans? New plans were quickly formulated for the week, a trip out to Awhitu Regional Park was the order of the day where we will spend the week before heading back into Ambury where we will park up whilst we help with the move.

We arrived at Awhitu on Monday afternoon and after a quick reconnoiter we were soon parked up and made ourselves comfortable. Awhitu is another one of the 26 Auckland Regional Parks and is located on the southern peninsular of the Manukau Heads. It is a lovely park, beautifully maintained and full of bird life, lots of lovely trees and plenty of nice camping areas complete with barbeques, tables, fresh water and toilets. There are some lovely beaches as well, where the net got set out but the flounder were avoiding us on this occasion.

Whilst here, we gave John & Margaret (fellow motorhomers see https://brvannini.wordpress.com/2013/12/20/and-back-to-kaitaia/) a call as they are building a house at Clarks Beach. We made arrangements to pop down to see them on Friday for morning tea, however another change of plans would evolve. Instead we are now going down to where they are parked up at Clark’s Beach to join them for the evening.

That is the plan as I write this on Friday morning ; tonight Clark’s Beach, tomorrow Ambury, then off to Whakapirau on Monday. Watch this space to see if we actually manage to keep to these plans.

PS. No photos in this post as I have “misplaced” the accessory device I use to load photos from the camera card onto my iPad. Hopefully it will reappear soon.