the fellowship

Auckland, New Zealand

So after a hefty Christmas lunch and a boxing day watching England do the usual in the cricket, it was a wonderful 4am start for my journey to Sydney and onto Auckland. A cool dawn with mist rising from the hollows emerged as the coach trundled along the Hume highway and onto Sydney airport, which was reasonably quiet and left me with 3 hours to kill before my flight. Great news came 30 minutes before that flight when my name was called over the speaker and I was presented with an upgraded ticket to Business Class on the Emirates flight to Auckland. Oh mumma! Pressing the button to raise my footstool and being presented with a wine list and menu were specific highlights…

I arrived to a drizzly, cool and windy Auckland and proceeded onto Newmarket, where Jenn and Ollie have a lovely little place complete with Christmas decs, fake snow and one of the most welcoming sofa-beds known to man!

Thursday morning arrived still fresh and showery but it soon brightened as Ollie and I wandered across the Domain, a huge green expanse of land onto Parnell and down to the city and Viaduct Harbour, where I supped my first Kiwi beer for over three years. Later in the day we headed up to Mount Eden, which offers spectacular views of the city and its surrounds. Like most of the hills in Auckland, it is an extinct volcano, or what the Maori fellas call Pa.

Here is the old crater, which apparently some crazy people do roly-polies down even though you’re not supposed to, tut tut tut. I’m surprised the kiwis haven’t started rolling those human hamster ball type things down there!

On Friday, Ollie and I set off to explore some other parts of Auckland, including the Eastern suburbs which include plenty of bays and small beaches, dotted with boats and with continually good views across to Rangitoto Island, another extinct volcano which dominates the landscape. This is the view from Achilles Point, which was near Ladies Bay which was just down the road from Gentleman’s Bay.

The water in Auckland is such a delightful turquoise, I don’t quite know why but nowhere else except New Zealand seems to have such colourful waters.

After the slowest wait for a Starbucks ever, we crossed the harbour bridge and entered the charming northern suburb of Devonport. It’s not much like Devonport in Plymouth (there didn’t seem to be any hoodies or 14 year old pram pushers) though there is the odd naval ship docked there. An interesting thing about Devonport I’m sure you’ll agree is that there are another two Pa there – North Head and Mount Victoria.

North Head was great, with some interesting old military defences and views looking out past colourful lush plants to Devonport and back across the water to the city. The big pointy thing is called the Sky Tower by the way and people pay good money to jump off it.

After all this volcano climbing (OK, you can drive up them!) some refreshment was needed along with some good ol’ Kiwi fush und chups in a pub in Devonport.

To walk off the grub (OK, drive) we went up to Mount Victoria, which had equally good views…this one looking back out across North Head and out to the Hauraki Gulf.

As it was Friday, it was only right to go down to the good old British boozer at the end of the day, where we drunk some homebrew and toasted an end to another arduous week in the Southern Hemisphere!