Itchy Feet, Wet Boots

Itchy feet. Gotta get on the road. Weather is too bad to go to South Island. Head north. Bay of Plenty looks good. Know some people. Take three days to get there. See the east coast. Hawkes Bay is vineyard country. Shall I go there? Wine not? Then how about up round the east most peninsula, which is almost totally Maori? Interesting. Gisborne. First city to see the sunrise each day. Cool. Then across to Plenty. Karen's uncle will put me up. Loads of guys to meet. I have their details. I have been warned about them...

I set out today in filthy weather. I was wet down the neck by Featherstone (60mins), and my used-to-be-waterproof boots we sodden by Masterton (2 hrs). I changed footwear at a service station. Packed the boots with paper towel and set off again. The rain let up slightly, but it remained grey. Nothing much to report, except sheep. I know there are lots of sheep (more than the population by 15:1) but I was tickled by this view
which doesn't do justice to just how funny it was, to suddenly be seeing more fleece than grass out the corner of my eye. Fluffy fuzzy sheep everywhere. It was like they had spilled out of some sheep-volcano, and were sprawling down the hillside, chomping, chomping, chomping on grass. (Which is all they seem to do. No card games, no roulette, generally no gambolling at all (!-groan)).

In Napier now. Youth hostel for the night. Oil change needed tomorrow ... and find some black silicon to bodge job my boots and fill the leaks where the upper meets the lower. A trip is all the more interesting for having to mend and make things. I'm damn well not going to buy more boots...