Category Archives: Uncategorised

Transfer to the Coromandel Peninsula

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Friday 13 February 2026 – Jane had ensured that the room we had at the Auckland City Hotel had a kitchenette, which gave two advantages. Firstly, of course, we could prepare mugs of Twining’s Finest Earl Grey* at times of our choosing; and secondly, we could prepare our own breakfast, since the buffet at the hotel was OK but short on fruit and not particularly good value. As well as the longed-for dental gear, we’d also stocked up with fruit and yoghurt so that we could breakfast at leisure and reasonably healthily.

The mission for yesterday was simple – check out of the hotel, pick up a hire car and drive to our next destination, Whitianga, on the Coromandel Peninsula. We manhandled our bags for the 10-minute walk to the car hire office. It’s actually an 8-minute walk, but one tends to spend a lot of time standing around waiting for the lights to change at busy and large intersections. On occasion I’m tempted to ignore the lights and just walk across if it’s obvious that there’s no reason to wait. But four or five lanes lugging baggage encouraged caution, so I waited for the lights with barely-concealed impatience.

At the Budget offices, the hire process appeared to be going smoothly until Kevin, the chap sorting us out, queried the end date of the booking, which he had as 22nd March. This is, indeed, the end date of our trip here, but we only need this car until we get to Christchurch on the South Island, at which point we hop a train. We were supposed to have a booking for a new hire car for when/where we disembark the train and thus the rest of our stay, and it seems that the local agents for Discover The World hadn’t twigged this.  Fortunately the sainted Kevin (he of the arcade?) and his boss, Sue, sorted the situation out for us and we’re grateful for their staff work. The queue of customers building up behind us probably weren’t, though.

So we took possession of a brand spanking new Mitsubishi ASX, with just 35km on the clock, which will be our steed for the next three weeks or so. It’s a bit larger than I’m used to (though not the utter monster we got in A Coruña when we walked the Camino Finisterre) so we started a bit gingerly whilst I got used to the car. Being Japanese and in New Zealand, the indicators and wipers are the other way round from UK cars, so driving round roundabouts with the wipers going will be a feature of the next few days – and the first few days of driving back in the UK, no doubt.

Anyhoo… our exit from Auckland was smooth and through only slightly congested traffic, and then we had the decision to make as to whether to take the more direct route to Whitianga or go the pretty way. We decided on the latter. And it was a very pleasant drive, through lots of typical North Island landscapes.

We (of course) saw sheep.

New Zealand is often quoted as having more sheep than people, and ChatGPT tells me that this is still true, though not as much as in the 1980s, when there were some 22 sheep per inhabitant. These days it’s nearer four or five.  What surprised a little, though, were the numbers of cattle.

The area we were driving through, round the bottom of the Firth of Thames, being flat, was obviously very well suited to either dairy or beef farming.  I read that there are about half as many cattle as sheep on the island, and they’re split roughly 60-40 in favour of dairy animals.

I guess many people will have read of the enormous amounts of rainfall that have been suffered in the North Island, and saw for our own eyes some evidence of its effects.

We stopped for coffee (OK, yes, and ice cream) at The Pink Shop at Kaiaua,

which is a very individual kind of place, serving as cafe, ice-creamery, eatery, corner shop, post office and second-hand bookshop.

They claim to serve the best coffee in Kaiaua, and I think this might be because there isn’t another cafe there, but it was a welcome break on the journey and the ice-cream was very good.

A little further along the road there actually was another cafe, but we decided not to stop there.

We carried on, through ever-impressive New Zealand landscapes but darkening weather.

After one leaves the flat plains south west of the Firth of Thames and starts up the Coromandel Peninsula, the roads become quite twisty, with climbs and descents, so sometimes one is by the coast

but more often into more hilly countryside. As one might expect, this gives rise to some more handsome scenery, and the roads feature lots of places where it’s safe to stop at the side to take photos.

It really was lovely scenery and it made the journey a pleasure.

We arrived at our accommodation, the Beachfront Resort in Whitianga, at around 4pm yesterday, and were greeted very genially by Paul on the reception and taken to our suite, which is comfortable and is set up entirely for self-catering. So we had a cup of tea, obviously, and then headed out for the fleshpots of Whitianga in search of (a) understanding where we had to get to for the items on our itinerary whilst we’re here, (b) sustenance for the day and (c) breakfast for the subsequent days we’ll be here.

Our schedule includes a couple of planned activities: a half-day cruise around the local coast and an all-day hike. In both cases we have to get to the local wharf, and for the hike we have to catch the shuttle ferry across to the other side (a place engagingly called Ferry Landing).

Having understood how all that worked, our next priority was to find a restaurant for an early dinner. Jane has good instinct for these things, and so, despite the fact that it was raining, we made our way past several eateries in order to get to a place called Salt,

which is a cocktail bar and restaurant. And a very good restaurant, too: we had a great meal based around snapper (yes, I had fish’n’chips) for outstanding value. Whilst we ate, the rain came lashing down, right through the screen that was supposed to protect us,

But it was only a shower, albeit a biblical one, and it was interesting to see the screen once the gusting wind had cleared the rain.

All we had to do then was to find a supermarket to get comestibles for the morrow, and there’s a substantial Woolworth’s in the town so that bit was straightforward.

And that was yesterday sorted.  Today we were supposed to be going on the cruise, but it, sadly, fell victim to the windy and wet weather,

but the hike should go ahead tomorrow, and can maybe be engineered to see on land some of the sights we would have seen from the boat. The practical upshot of this is that much of today has been a day (thus far) of splendid relaxation and further trying to get over jet lag (I’m getting there, slowly).

However, sloth for an entire day is not an option (I’m told. In no uncertain terms); we are travelling and so we Can’t Just Sit Around All Day (bugger!). What do you do on a rainy day? You go to a museum. Fortunately, Whitianga has one. What luck!

Whitianga might be a tiny place, but the area has some significant history. Just around the corner – the other side of that ferry journey – is Cook’s Beach, where he moored the Endeavour in 1769. He witnessed the transit of Mercury whilst here, and hence gave the name of Mercury Bay to the area. He also attended a powhiri, a welcoming ceremony with a local chieftain, where they exchanged gifts (Cook donated the potato to this new land) and established a meeting of minds between the two nations. The interpreter, by the way, was a gifted local linguist.

The museum covers the period from 950AD when the first humans, a Polynesian called Kupe and his crew, set foot on New Zealand; but it wasn’t until 150 years later that Polynesians came in numbers to colonise the new land.

Obviously, there’s Polynesian history figures in the exhibits, with models of the boats they used

This is a model of a 20m replica, Te Aurere, built in the 1990s to demonstrate the voyaging capabilities of these boats.

and examples demonstrating the skill in carving.

There’s a lot of information about Cook, of course, and a rather uninspiring display about HMS Buffalo, a convict and timber transport vessel which was wrecked in Mercury Bay in 1840 (the year of the Treaty of Waitangi), It gave its name to Buffalo Beach, beside which I am typing the very words. Other things covered in the museum include: inevitably, the Kiwi

among displays of other local birds

including, let us not forget, the Giant Moa

an enormous (extinct) bird with an improbably small head; information about historical aspects of the area, including mining; and information about the Kauri tree, an important conifer, particularly to the Māori, who historically used its timber in boat construction (pub quiz fact: it’s the only native timber that floats) and its gum for a variety of purposes. A European-driven industry grew up around it in the 1800s, similar to the Huon Pine we saw in Tasmania, and by the 1930s most Kauri forest had been logged. It’s also significantly threatened by Kauri Dieback, which is transmitted via tiny spores, very often carried on the soles of shoes. This kind of ecological threat explains why biosecurity is taken so seriously on entry to New Zealand.

There is something of a disconnect between the opening hours of the various establishments in Whitianga; the museum stays open until 4pm, but the restaurants, as far as we could tell, don’t open until 5pm (and the cafes closed at 2pm). So we pottered back to our accommodation for a couple of hours before venturing once more into town.  Having looked at the options, we settled on a place called Get Stoked and headed there through some reasonably heavy rain.  It turned out to be a cheerful and slightly noisy place, and provided very tasty salads and fish, though a Greek would not have immediately recognised the salad bit. We ended up chatting to a couple of old codgers on the table next to us for a few minutes before we left. It was a swift but very amiable meal and the pissing rain had stopped by the time we left, which was a plus.

We’re on a tour involving some hiking tomorrow, on the Cook’s Bay side, and have to get across the ferry betimes to meet our guide, so we’re back to early starts for a couple of days. The forecast is basically damp – anything from showers to deluges, temperatures in the mid-20s and humidity in the mid-90s. I hope we don’t get too badly drenched, but you’ll have to come back to find out how the day unfolded.

 

 

 

 

*  To their credit, the Auckland City Hotel provided Earl Grey tea in the room and large cups from which to drink it. It wasn’t Twining’s Finest, but it was perfectly decent; evidence, should one need it, that New Zealand is a civilised country.

The two-day journey home

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Tuesday 30 September 2025 – The journey home from near the Ukraine border is not a short one. We discovered that Suceava has an airport, and so I suppose we could have constructed a route home, except (a) WizzAir and (b) Luton Airport. There are some hurdles not worth leaping. Suceava also has a railway station with a direct train to Bucharest, and that was our starting point for a 2-day journey home that was not without its pitfalls, though (spoiler alert) we were only delayed about an hour in our arrival home.

There was basically a choice between two trains, roughly 9am or midday. The journey, though, is nearly seven hours long, and so we opted for the 09:07 train, on the basis that should the Romanian train service cock things up we would at least have a contingency of the later train; and the earlier one would give us a chance to get to Bucharest in late afternoon when we could seek a decent evening meal before overnighting back at the Hotel Minerva.

The lady of the house at Maridor recommended that we start the journey to Suceava at 0730, since it’s about an hour’s drive and it’s no bad thing to have contingency. Privately, I think it also suited her, as it meant that she could drop Vilanel off at school en route.

It continued to be very autumnal as we set out.

We arrived at Suceava station

with about 45 minutes to spare before our train was due.  The inside of the station was not a particularly welcoming environment, with people moodily wiping the floors,

and what seemed like a limited choice of refreshment options.

The departures board showed that our train was on time, and would depart from platform 3, so I thought it might be a good idea to check out the scene and make sure we understood how to get on to the right platform. I managed to find some seats for Jane which were not occupied by deadbeats who had presumably slept the night there, and went out to scout around. At first, it was a bit depressing, as there was actually no indication of which platform was which, although getting from one platform to the next was simple enough – just walk across the track.

The straggly group of people gave me a feeling of which platform we needed to get to; but, more importantly, I discovered that there was a real coffee bar there; a welcome sight.

We got ourselves outside a coffee and bought sandwiches for the journey; there being a mini-mart next door, we got some fruit to accompany them. At the appointed hour, our train turned up

and we took our appointed seats, in first class, of course, dahling.

For me, the journey passed uneventfully – we had cellular coverage for most of it, so I read the papers for pretty much the entire journey. Jane took a more lively interest in what we were passing and some photographs of it: several ghastly communist-era buildings, many of which looked abandoned;

plenty of agriculture;

some modern infrastructure;

and, accompanying us for much of our journey, a massive road development, which will presumably be lovely when it’s finished, and ease the journey between Bucharest and parts north.

It was nearly 4pm when we arrived at Bucharest and everyone streamed off the train

and on to a busy station concourse.

Everything had gone smoothly thus far, and we encountered the first wrinkle in our travel when we tried to get into the metro to get to our hotel. We’d kept our cards from our previous time in the city and they were in theory good for several more metro journeys. Well, Jane’s was; mine, however, had magnetically given up the ghost, so I had to bumble about getting myself another one; hardly an imposition, but not welcome when blundering about with a suitcase in tow.

It was comforting to know that our room in the Hotel Minerva should include something almost more important than a bed and bedding – a kettle and a fridge. En route back, I popped into a Carrefour Express and got some milk, and once we’d checked in,

we could indulge ourselves in a mug of Twinings finest Earl Grey, which was very welcome.

Vlad the lad was on reception at the hotel. I’d been hoping that we might catch him having a crafty cigarette outside the hotel, in which case he would, of course, have been Vlad the Inhaler, but it was not to be.  He booked us a transfer to the airport for the following morning and we headed out to eat. Being creatures of habit, and having enjoyed our meal there before, we headed back to Hanul Manuc.  This was now 5.30 in the afternoon, and there was obviously Something Going On at the St. Anthony Church, as there was a massive queue to get in. It sounded as if a service was being relayed outside the church, so I suppose that’s where people were headed.

Hanul Manuc was exactly as before, except, since it was getting cool as the sun went down, blankets were provided for them as wanted.

There were more cats in attendance on this occasion, too.

We had another good meal there and, importantly, some of their rather nice apricot palinka (fruit liqueur); we’d sampled others up north,  but they were much coarser. Having eaten, we decided that we should seek out a bottle to take home with us, just in case it turned out to be the exception to the rule that local booze never travels well. As we emerged from Hanul Manuc at 7pm, I was astonished to see that the queue for the church had, if anything, got longer.

We found a shop which sold us some of the palinka (about half the price it would have cost in the UK), and peeked in through the netting surrounding Vlad’s castle as we headed back to the metro.

Thus ended the day, and we had to head to bed early, as the alarm was set for 0430 (ugh!), to get us to the airport in time for an 0825 flight.

Wednesday 1 October 2025 – We duly got up and were ready to leave the hotel (with the packed breakfast that they’d created for us). This is the point at which the first unexpected setback happened – our transfer didn’t turn up, which is not the start that we wanted. After fifteen anxious minutes, I got the hotel to order us a cab, which (a) turned up promptly and (b) got us to the airport for about a third of the price of the hotel transfer service.

We went into the terminal building, which is not in terrifically good shape, truth be told,

and stared at the Departures screen

which had a gap against the BA check-in entry. We tried not to worry that we should somehow magically know where to go, and we spent half an hour staring at the screen, willing a check-in area to appear, whilst around our entry all the other flights appeared to be operating OK. I consulted the BA website, which showed that the departure time for our flight was unchanged at 0825 – but the arrival time was listed as being 30 minutes late. We resigned ourselves to standing there until the gods of international flight decided that we could proceed, and eventually our check-in desk number appeared on the screen, so we rushed off, dropped our bags and went through security.

It was a bus ride to the aeroplane, but apart from that the flight proceeded smoothly. We even got free hot water and milk from the cabin staff so we could make our own tea – I happened to have a couple of Twinings finest Earl Grey teabags about my person, you understand. The plane took off a bit late but landed exactly on schedule, so why there had been notice of a delay is a mystery that will never satisfactorily be resolved.

The next wrinkle in the travel came as we got into the arrivals hall at Terminal 3 to find that no taxi was there to pick us up. The driver eventually called me to say that traffic was really bad but he’d be there as soon as he could. So we went and got ourselves a coffee and chatted with a lady who was similarly  awaiting a delayed taxi. Something Was Definitely Afoot – I could see that there was congestion all around the airport. Our driver turned up – having taken over an hour to get from Terminal 5 to Terminal 3 – and we discovered what the issue was as he went to pay for his parking. There had been a major fire in the tunnel that leads to the terminal buildings, which is obviously going to cause ructions. To be fair, Heathrow responded by opening all the barriers at the car park, so we didn’t have to pay for parking there.

In the end, we arrived home only about an hour later than we might have expected and it was sweet indeed to be able to put ourselves outside some more of Twinings finest Earl Grey before getting round to the unpacking and laundry.

That was the end of our two-day journey to get home, and we once again reflected on what a great experience the last fortnight had been. Would we recommend it to others? Yes and no, is the answer. The monasteries are absolutely worth travelling to see, assuming you like That Kind Of Thing; but the walking between them was pretty unrewarding. I would recommend rather that people fly to Suceava and rent a car to get around; less healthy exercise, maybe, but more efficient use of time and greater flexibility. However, we’re both profoundly glad that we’ve been able to see the monasteries and experience some rural Romanian culture and hospitality.

Th-th-th-that’s all for now, folks. Once again, these pages will go dark for a few months until our next holiday travels. I hope you’ve subscribed so that you’ll be able to join us when we leave these shores once again. Bye-bye for now.

 

Raining in our expectations

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Monday 29 September 2025 – Today was our last monastery. You’ll probably be glad, having been assailed by multiple images of multiple frescoed walls and ceilings, but stick with me one last time, eh?

The monastery, Voroneț monastery, is about 10km from the Humor monastery, i.e. about 12km from Maridor, where we’re staying. The original idea, as positied in our itinerary, was to be driven over there and to walk back. Given that we awoke to a damp, dismal day, with the prospect of rain for quite a bit of it, this plan didn’t appeal. We agreed with the lady of the house that we would be driven over there and also get a lift back.

After doing battle with a less-than-satisfactory shower which dispensed only less-than-hot water, we had a late breakfast. It was an ample meal, bearing considerable evidence of its rural roots – fried eggs, copious amounts of two sorts of cheese, meatballs, small cocktail-sized sausages, something that Julia the previous evening had described as buttermilk but which was more akin to a thin, somewhat fizzy yoghurt, bread and butter, plum jam and mashed avocado. We managed to get hot water for our tea, so we were well fed up by 10am, when the man of the house came to take us to the monastery. It was raining really quite hard at this point, and, rather engagingly en route, he picked up an elderly chap who was walking to town (a 7km journey) and dropped him off at the pharmacy. Then he took us to the monastery and, to our surprise, told us he’d wait whilst we looked around. This saved us the bother of working out how to get picked up and we were correspondingly grateful.

So: the monastery. It was constructed by Stephen the Great in 1488 over a period of 3 months and 3 weeks to commemorate the victory at Battle of Vaslui. Its walls weren’t painted until 1547, but they obviously did a bang up job, because the monastery has in its time been called the “Sistine Chapel of the East” for its vivid frescoes, which feature an intense shade of blue known in Romania as “Voroneț blue.”

However.

This is what you see as you walk in through the gate.

It’s a sad sight, not too surprising, I suppose. The monastery was deserted soon after 1775, when the Habsburg monarchy annexed the northern part of Moldavia and the monks only returned to Voroneț in 1991. It’s amazing, really, that those frescoes on the other side of the building have survived as well as they have.

The frescoes on the flat wall at the end of the monastery building also have survived well.

The story of the Last Judgement depicted on this wall seems to be similar to that on the narthex at Humor. (Voroneț came first – Ed)

Inside, as usual there was a prohibition on photography, but again, some others were taking  pictures, so I followed suit, as the interior is, like the others, a thing of joy.

For some reason, there was a seismograph installation in the church.

So there it was – our final monastery.

It was still raining as we went outside to be driven back to Maridor. The weather relented occasionally later and enabled Jane to get a couple of non-spattered views across the countryside from our room,

but the weather was too unreliable to risk going out for a walk and disturbing all the neighbourhood dogs, so we spent the rest of the day in sloth, drinking tea and sustaining ourselves with the delicious fudge-like something-or-other that we’d bought at Pasul Palma.

On this trip, we have now visited four of the six or seven painted monasteries of Bucovina which have UNESCO World Heritage status. The frescoed exteriors all date from the 1500s and of course show various levels of deterioration due to the effects of the weather (generally affecting one side more than the others), deficiencies of technique and degree of upkeep. Looking at them in chronological order:

Humor: one of the oldest, it was founded by Prince Petru Rares and painted in 1530. It is known for the rich red pigments but has deteriorated badly on one side.

Moldovița: also founded by Petru Rares and painted in 1532.

Voroneț: built by Stephen the Great in 1488 but not painted until 1547, it was deserted for 200 years between 1774 and 1991and fell into disrepair, hence the considerable deterioration.

Sucevița: founded by the Movilă family and painted in 1581, Sucevița was the last and is considered the finest of them all. Techniques of painting and upkeep had improved over the fifty years since Humor; the monastery was in a sheltered position and was additionally protected by high fortress walls, and as a result it is possible to get an inkling of how spectacular these monasteries must have looked 500 years ago!

We’ve therefore done what we set out to do – a short exploration of the country’s capital, a little hiking in the Carpathian mountains and a visit to probably the best-preserved of the Painted Monasteries. En passant, we’ve also learned a lot of the history of the country, both ancient and modern, seen a variety of its vistas and cultures, enjoyed meeting its people and feel we appreciate the place somewhat more than we did before we first came. We’ve been extraordinarily lucky with the weather, found gin and tonic in most places and didn’t run out of Twinings finest Earl Grey at any point – a most satisfactory set of achievements all round.

All we have to do now is to get home, a process which will take more than one day. The theory goes that we catch a train tomorrow for the six-hour train journey to Bucharest, overnight in Bucharest and finish by taking a ridiculously early flight back to Blighty. Wish us luck.