The bad and the good

The wind and the rain bounced us around last night and consequentially I awoke late.  Well the truth is Jan decided I had overdone the beauty sleep and decided to wake me up just before 9am. She had risen at 5am and done the decent thing by tiptoeing around for four hours.  The morning was cold but clear with some sunshine.  After the morning chores were done we decided to move to the 48 hour moorings near Cheshire Oaks.  That was the bad decision.  We’d only moved 100 metres when it started to lightly rain.  Then it got progressively heavier.  I sent Jan inside where it was lovely and warm as there seemed little point in both of us feeling miserable.  Fortunately the rain stopped when our cruising stopped! 

Yesterday we passed some rural CRT 48 hour visitor moorings north of Chester which have temporary winter mooring permit signs.

Yes… empty!

The weather was still looking good at 11.45am so we decided to walk to the nearby Cheshire Oaks Retail Park.  It was September 2013 when we were last this way and at the time wouldn’t have known about the retail park if Peter & Margaret (nb Kelly-Louise) hadn’t mentioned it.

The retail park appears to mostly consist of well known clothing  or footwear outlets.  None of this is much interest to us, except Jan wanted to visit the store in the photo below.

Unfortunately they had nothing that fitted.   If you are a size 8 then it would have been your lucky day!

This is a very large retail park and we were both rather surprised by the number of shoppers for a Tuesday after Christmas.  Speaking of Christmas, has anyone noticed some of the supermarkets already have Easter Bunnies on their shelves.

Jan started to go all trembly and weak at the knees.  Honestly it wasn’t me, apparently I no longer have that effect on her.  The problem was hunger!  I took the hint and suggested we splash out and have a sit down lunch before returning to the boat.  The retail park has a number of food outlets but I wanted to take her somewhere special.

Nothing like an ammonia washed, hormone infused, antibotic impregnated beef pattie, encased by a three year old soft white bun. What does not kill you, makes you stronger.

I happened to notice the roof of this commercial building on the way back to Waiouru.

Do you also see all the stove flues.  There are at least 24!  Why are there so many?

OK… The good bit of news.  It started to rain just after we had returned to the boat.