After watching the new James Bond film the previous afternoon, we woke up on Friday morning to bright sunshine and clear blue skies, much needed after the previous nights of rain. We are staying just outside Blenheim, surrounded by vineyards, the heart of New Zealand wine production. Richard and I are keen drinkers of New Zealand whites, so we decided to go on a wine tasting tour. At 10am sharp the Marlborough Wine Tours minibus picked us up from our campsit...

Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire had pretensions of being a lady, but was caught out by her slightly sordid past. Our Blanche has no such pretensions, only the grubby history. For those who may have missed the fact, Blanche is our rented campervan. She was apparently a 'working girl' in Japan - no, not a geisha, but some kind of van used by a small business. The Japanese apparently dump all their vehicles over about six years old because of the costs ...

On Tuesday, after our first night of heavy rain we took the ferry ride to the South Island, where we plan to stay until heading back to the North Island for my Dad and Jan's wedding on Valentine's Day. During the ferry journey I heard a local woman saying that Nelson (where we were planning to go after getting off the boat) had also had heavy rain and the roads might be blocked so not to got there, it was better to head south towards Christchurch. We dived into...

To buy, or not to buy? That was the question. To be more precise, the original question was how long would it take us to buy a campervan? Those who had known us take four months to buy our furniture in St Vlas - including eight weeks just to hang the paintings - were betting that our allotted time of five days would be at least doubled. In gambling terminology, the smart money was 'going long' on our purchase of the ideal vehicle to carry us around New Zealan...

Hello, Auckland? Is anyone out there??? Yes, we know that there are in fact more than one million people in Auckland, but it just doesn't seem like New Zealand's biggest city. It feels more like a moderately-sized town, such as Leamington Spa. Even Minehead where I grew up (population c.10,000) has a wider main street, for goodness sake. I suppose this sense of an overblown village is exacerbated by the contrast with Hong Kong, which we left on Tuesday evening....