Sadly the next morning we woke up to poring rain which ruined our plans and dampened our spirits. Instead we had a day of driving towards Westport, the rain was so hard we didn't even fancy getting out of the van at various look out points on route. The rain continued to thunder down so we stayed in the camper, giving us a perfect opportunity to catch up on the blog!

The next day the weather was still horrendous so we took another long drive to Westport arriving at the campsite in the late afternoon. We cooked our traditional camping dinner of pasta and went to bed. In the morning we went to look at the seal colony at Tauranga Bay before starting the drive to Greymouth, the largest town on the West Coast. Lonely Planet list the route from Westport to Greymouth in the Top 10 road trips. It is a spectacular road. Unfortunately we didn't have the best day for it, but the beaches still looked lovely and clean, stretching for miles along the coast. On route we stopped at Paparoa National Park to look at the pancake rocks on the coast. They were quite a strange sight and scientists still don't know why they are layered like they are. When arriving in Greymouth we booked ourselves on to a tasting session at Monteiths Brewery. After a walk around the town and posting some postcards we went back to the Brewery for the 4pm tasting. The old brewery is being refurbished so we were shown a film of how the beer is brewed before we began the tasting! It worked out well as we were the only 2 on the tour at 4pm. We tasted 7 different beers and a cider, all were really nice. Our favourites were the summer beer with honey and ginger and a shandy tasting beer. At the end of the tasting we had a full glass of our favourite and Rachel felt quite drunk by the end of it! We bought a selection of 6 different ones at the end and the good news is we can get them in Waitrose! We combined the tasting with a meal deal at a restaurant in the town. We chose the Railway Hotel and the brewery organised a taxi for us. The food was really tasty and the portions huge, it made a great change from camping food!