Down south

Up early this morning as we needed to get down south to collect my new passport.  Jan tidied Waiouru whilst I walked to the Rugby office of Enterprise Rentals.  They don’t open until 9.00am on a Saturday but I was hopeful of finding someone there early.  Unfortunately it wasn’t to be and I had to loiter in the rain whilst I waited.

Obviously I was first in the queue and departed around 9.15am in a nearly new Renault Clio.  There is too much shiny plastic in it and I hit my head on the ceiling getting in.  It appears to run on the smell of an oily rag, but is gutless….. Couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding!  Probably because it has a sewing machine engine!  It’s also noisy…….

We headed south down the M6 and then M1 into a mixture of light and heavy showers.  The two ‘slappers’ in front appeared to be slow but effective.  Yes… I’m talking about the windscreen wipers…. what else?

I don’t feel quite so lost now I have the new passport and to celebrate we went for lunch at The Anglers Retreat. 

They must have retreated quite some distance as there isn’t any water for miles!  Apparently the pub changed its name some years ago and was formerly the Lord Lucian.  I assume it was renamed shortly after Lord Lucian murdered the nanny and disappeared.  The meal was OK but the service slow!

All too soon it was time to head back to Waiouru, in the rain of course.  This time Jan managed to get her comfort stop!  I never saw anything like these moto services in NZ.  This one straddled the motorway enabling pedestrians to cross.

Australia has roadhouse but I’ve not seen anything as fancy as these!  The last task for the day is to cut up the old passport.