Day 2 Coromandel Roadtrip

Tuesday 30 September 2014

Got up early enough to have quick chat with my brother before he left for work this morning.Nephew Ben was fast asleep in bed when we left about 9am to take the motorway south.Traffic was light and in no time at all we were travelling roads we had never been on before!! Boy, there are a lot of dairy farms in our country now! Crossed the flat plains heading towards Thames and it was, "Wish I had a dollar for every black and white cow I've seen today!" time.

Crossed the once notorious Kopu Bridge and arrived in Thames about 11ish. Did I say the weather was great?!! had a quick look around the town--it's a kind of weird mixture of old, cute, quaint and modern all rolled together.Had a quick lunch in a nice cafe and decided to carry on to Coromandel Town.

We followed the road along the coastline of the Firth of Thames (remind me to look up the definition for 'firth' sometime).It was very narrow and windy and thank goodness, the tide was well in otherwise the views might not have been so nice.The dear little skinny road hugged the edge of the hills and only scattered and valiant pohutukawas on its seaward side kept it from crumbling into the water.How peaceful it was and probably a nice place to live (lots of comfy looking houses along the roadside) but, "Really, Darling!!! How could you bear to wake up to a view of a firth, when you could be looking at open ocean, rolling breakers and glorious mounds of sand? Simply not quite the thing!"

Just when I was about to say, "I think I've had enough of this road!" we turned inland to cut across a couple of headlands and the road climbed upwards giving us the opportunity for a few pull-overs to take shots of the amazing views.Back in the car we got and thought about putting on some more Bob Dylan, (No! Not in the mood for him today, let's just enjoy the views of country not seen before!"

In no time at all, we were arriving at Coromandel Town which is as cute as a button. I think it's nicer than Thames though much smaller, and sort of oldie worldie but with a genuine atmosphere. It actually has a haberdashery shop, and an old-fashioned looking butcher, and several other historic looking buildings that are still in use.In short, very cute.

We found a smoked fish shop and bought smoked mullet and roe which we took to our motel for late lunch/afternoon tea before getting in the car again and going to Barry Brickell's pottery and miniature railway. Now, there's a hard-working guy--still making a living off his pottery at aged 78-not helped from me, I must confess, as I did not like any of his work, but anyway, I digress! What else has this guy done? Nothing less than construct an entire railway track up and down an entire hill along which you can ride for a modest fee.This expedition was the spouse's idea and I was prepared to be underwhelmed but it was really rather fun.You get chugged all the way to the top of a really high hill and the views are amazing. Tell you what else was amazing-you will understand of course, that railways, like roads, sometimes need to pass through cuttings in a hillside, and sometimes the bare faces of these cuttings need to be reinforced with some material to stop them sliding down.Of course, you could buy bricks, or reinforcing timber but the expense would kill you.Enter the abandoned and empty wine bottle!!

So, next time you are churning through the bowels of Auckland's motorway system, try to imagine that the walls of those man-made canyons are lined with wine bottles.That's what parts of Mr Brickell's railway are like.They say lots of the empties are remnants of Mr Brickell's parties, which in the 70's apparently were a legend.

After that, we retired to a nice, clean and cosy motel (Coromandel Court Motel,365 Kapanga Rd,Coromandel Town)for a wee rest, before wandering up the road to a local pub for dinner. We had a meal which was somewhat America-influenced----size trying to compensate for quality.Had a half hour walk around the village after that but then it started getting too dark so we headed back to the motel. Enroute we passed an abandoned, half-burned down aged wooden mansion, which was adrift in  its own little sea of long grass, overgrown shrubs and abandoned, rusty cars. Oh, what a sad air of faded glamour and frustrated dreams!! Large signs proclaimed the AMP Insurance Company as bastards for refusing to pay out compensation for fire damage. They also clearly stated NO TRESPASSING!!! It was a curiously nice way to end the day--perhaps we related too well to the sadly fading and aging wrecks behind the once grand fence?! So, we went to bed and slept really well.