Shane Batchelor (Page 5)

As Stated in my previous post Pakawau is one of the loveliest places around the top of the South Island is Pakawau, a small location approximately 12km west of Collingwood, both 10km west is Puponga the last settlement in the west side of Golden Bay and the start of Farewell Spit. We are camped up at the Pakawau Motor Camp which is a lovely place to park at. A short drive or bike ride to Puponga and dealing the Wharariki Road takes you to Cape Farewell viewing platform which is an amazing view on either good or bad weather days. It rained for a coupleRead More →

It’s Monday 23rd June, a couple of days of sunshine before the big wet comes in for 3-4 days, because of the impending wet we have decided to camp up at Pakawau Beach Park Campsite which is a lovely place. We have been here before a couple of years ago and loved the place although we were then parked across the road at the old school house. Once parked up and settled down, we enjoyed our regular winter brunch of porridge with banana, buckwheat, blue Berries and hemp seeds before a walk along the beach. Today is Tuesday 24th June, woke to a beautiful sunrise…Read More →

Another day blessed with good weather and a walk was the days exercise. Jude has selected the Pupu Hydro Power Station track a 6km with about 230 meters of vertical meters to climb. We had done this track 5 years ago and it was nice to see they have done a lot of work to make it easier to walk, the last time we did it we had to climb up a very slippery slope with tree roots to negate. Once at the top of the climb the trail levels out and follows the water race for approximately 2.2km. We made the good choice ofRead More →

A cool start to the day thank god for our 4 kilowatt diesel heater as Moho was cosy warm 5min later. Jude gets the lamb shanks prepared for the slow cooker so I’m already salivating about tonight’s dinner. As you can see by the feature image it is such a lovely morning. I decided to have a Quick Look at the waters edge and I was surprised to see fish jumping out of the water in the harbour. Not sure what species of fish it was but it kept me entertained for a while. Went into Tākaka so I could get a shape and thinRead More →

We spent seven days at Motueka and enjoyed the MTB tracks at Kaiteriteri. Good to see Jude hammering her bike around the tracks, overall running up Over 100kms on the bikes…. and the only downside was a damaged wing mirror indicator… small story!🤨 But now it’s time to climb over the Tākaka hills Golden Bay where we will spend a week or so in the Golden Bay Area. For the next three days we will stay at Port Tarakohe. We arrived at Port Tarakohe NZMCA setup camp, the weather is amazing, sunny, warm and the lightest of breeze. After we had brunch it was offRead More →

One of our favourite places to stop over for a night or two is the Canvastown Hotel, an old establishment on SH6 10km west of Havelock. With plenty of room to park a 8m motorhome for the night we find it a perfect location to park over and time and weather if favourable a good place to explore the area, especially up the Wakamarina River Road to Butchers Flat Camp. Once parked and set for the night I went in to the hotel to notify the owner we were there, The warm welcome I got from the on duty staff, I enticed myself to haveRead More →