The next morning we left Te Anau and headed for the Catlins. We took the scenic route along the southern coast to Invercargill, stopping for a break at Clifden to look at the old suspension bridge (and for me to release a book: White Ruff by Glenn Balch), where we discovered a pair of German…

So much for weather forecasts. The promised rain didn’t arrive the next morning, and in fact the clouds were beginning to clear as we set off to Milford. By the time we reached the edge of the bush the sky was almost completely blue, just the odd wispy cloud to make the scenery look even…

(Yes, I’m finally getting round to writing up the rest of the trip…) The weather hadn’t improved greatly the next day, and the forecast wasn’t looking good for the southern part of the island, so Stepfather suggested we give Fiordland a miss and just head straight for Dunedin. But I argued that Fiordland is probably…

Well, we’ve made it safely as far as Alexandra – we drove down from Christchurch yesterday, and spent today exploring Queenstown, Wanaka and the surrounding area. Tomorrow we’re off to Te Anau and then on to Milford. So far I haven’t managed to get us lost 🙂 Photos and a full report when I get…

We had a slow start the next morning (thank goodness!), while we organised vehicles. Mum had offered Father-Outlaw her car for the day, rather than having to take the campervan everywhere, but first we had to wait for it to be returned by someone who’d borrowed it the day before or something (it was all…

Bright and early on Sunday morning, Father Outlaw walked up to the campervan hire place (which is conveniently close to our place – sometimes the advantages of living near the airport really do outweigh the disadvantages (like being woken in the middle of the night by the rumble of the huge Starlifter plane taking off…

Yayyy!!!! After today I have a whole three weeks off work!!! I don’t normally take all my leave in one chunk like this (I usually prefer to space it out through the year with lots of little holidays, so it’s not so long between breaks), but seeing as the Outlaws are here, I thought I…

Well, we’ve survived the first few days of the visit. The Outlaws are almost over their jetlag, I’m almost used to sleeping on a camp stretcher (we’ve given them our bed, so we’re in the spare room on stretchers), the cats are almost used to having strange people in the house, and the weather has…

(said in an appropriately creepy horror film voice, of course) The Outlaws arrived safely yesterday morning – incredibly tired of course, after the stupidly long trip and all the time-zone changes, but they bravely managed to stay awake for the rest of the day. Amazingly, the weather turned beautiful yesterday for their arrival – it’s…

MrPloppy got bitten by a mosquito last night (or it may have been a spider, or some other nasty bitey type thing – when he noticed the bite, there had been a mosquito buzzing around, but he’d also spent the day gardening, so almost anything could have been caught in his sleeve). This morning, the…