Wednesday 1st Mar Wellington (23 degrees)

 We had a fabulous night in our beautiful accommodation and after breakfast decided to drive up to the base of Mt Taranaki. Mt Taranaki does have a few ski runs on it but of course at this time of the year there is no snow, although there was a tiny bit right at the top of the mountain. We had some beautiful views over the Taranaki valley from here and it was worth the drive. The town of Stratford had some lovely old buildings in it and after speaking to our host about the lovely old buildings, she recommended we called into Eltham on our way down to Wellington as it had many listed buildings. The town was most interesting, full of beautiful old buildings but most of them empty. The town in fact resembled a ghost town but I did enjoy walking up and down the streets. From here we had an uneventful drive down to Wellington. We did stop in a large town called “Bulls” for lunch. There were many bulls around both live and statues but we found it a very unusual name for a town. There must be a story behind it but I haven’t “googled” it yet.

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