The weather forecast for the day was for rain later in the evening so we decided that we would do the historic town walk and Long Beach trail first, and book on an early afternoon dolphin watching cruise.
Set off after another wicked breakfast of layered ricotta cheese pancakes with banana and grapes followed by toast and Feijo jelly (a kind of guava) and other home made preserves. Obviously muesli, yogurt and fruit to start.
The B&B from the front. The bottom right-hand window is ours.
The waterfront across the road from the house.
Our first point of call in town was the Church which is the oldest in New Zealand - after seeing the oldest in North America at Tadoussac we are contemplating collecting them.
Will need some research I guess, as we stumbled upon the first two. The church still bears the marks of the Maori wars, with visible bullet holes. We had had a short introduction to the wars and the history of the colonisation on our walk last night whilst waiting for dusk at the top of Flagstaff Hill. This was where the first Union Flag had been raised in 1840 after the Treaty of Waitangi, but the flagstaff was cut down by the Maori people four times over the next few years. It was all because of various misunderstandings of what the treaty actually meant. Can't imagine the English being anything but utterly decent chaps in claiming the land, they'd never do anything underhand. Probably a bit like the promises that have been made to Scotland just before the referendum. I wonder what Alex Salmond would choose to cut down.
After the church we visit the museum to pick up the trail leaflet. The places of interest are numbered in the booklet with some text telling you about what you're looking at. Along the waterfront to see the Pompelier Missionary building;
Not only oldest church but and oldest everything else too - Hotel;
Customs House;
Outside the Custom's House this fig tree had the look of something really ancient but in fact was only planted in the 1870s.
Eric finds a suitable perch.
Pretty old I guess, but has nothing on the old growth Kauri which are many thousands of years - more on those later when we get to the Kauri forests.
Also apparently the oldest gas station, although we somehow managed to miss this.
Further into town to view the settlers' cottages. This is just one of them, there was a whole row in this style.
Some have very steep drives.
Further along we came across this rather strange device.
Eric was a bit worried about the fate of barking dogs given their proposal to patent this alternative to the electric dog collar, which have been outlawed. They are still working on portability issues!
Out past the old army camp ground and along the path to Long Beach where we saw some possible future accommodation options...
Long Beach is on the other side of the headland to Russell village, and where the swell comes in for some reasonable surf (although not this morning). Would you believe it- we are in another Tsunami Warning Zone, but on the other side of the Pacific this time.
On to Queen Elizabeth view point (she came here in 1963 but not to do any surfing, as far as the history books show anyway).
Some good views of New Zealand Dottrell on the beach, in breeding plumage.
Of course going down also means going up, and it was very very steep! So steep you can't even see the road we came up over the brow.
Eric stops at the top of the steep hill to catch his breath.
Returning over the headland to the B&B we spot some more real estate to purchase,
and head back down the other side of the hill again, with a view of the village from above
First one hill...
Some children fishing on the wharf caught a large fish, but it was so big it pulled the hand line out of her fingers, it was a Kau, apparently very good smoked.
The boat came in from Paihai and was quick to load and embark. Not far out we turned into the Long Beach area where we had been earlier, and there were the dolphins. A pod with both adults and babies.
There was a slight swell running but nothing too drastic in the bay. People who had been hoping to swim with the dolphins were disappointed as it's not allowed if they have babies with them (I would have thought it was a bit on the parky side anyway).
Picking up speed as we went out through the Islands we had to move seats as the spray was coming over the side (we were on the second deck!). As we cleared the Islands and made our way to 'The Hole in the Rock' the waves were now much larger. They closed off the top deck, told everyone to sit down, keep hold of their children (it's the equivalent of half term here) and either move to the middle of the boat or inside as we were going to be tossed about a bit. He wasn't joking. Apparently it had calmed down a it from the morning boat trip, when they had a 2 to 3 metre swell, but it was still quite big. Too dangerous to actually go through the hole in rock as they usually do.
Saw some Petrel and Australasian Gannet (below), but no Penquins.
The sun had come out in fits and starts but as we headed back it looked as if the cloud had come down.
By the time we trod off the ship back in Russell it had started raining. Ducked into a waterfront restaurant for an early dinner hoping rain will have eased by the time we'd finished eating. It had... But then bucketed down again about 4min from our accommodation - enough time to get quite wet.
Needed a night in to catch up with the blog as we'd had trouble connecting to the internet the night before. By the time the sun was going down the rain had stopped again.
The house was built in about 1900 and belonged to the Anglican pastor for Russell. The floor and structural beams are of local Kauri and many of the components were salvaged from shipwreck and demolition timbers. The floor supports rested on whale vertebrae. When our hosts renovated the place they found some of these were still in situ and one of these now sits in the dining room.
