Post 28 – Cooper’s Beach to Kerikeri | froud.com

Kerkeri is a good looking town – prosperous, cosmopolitan and arty. We arrived here early again (11:30 today ) but the lady in charge at the motel (a pom whose dad lives in Bashley in the New Forest) was quite happy for us to take the room and dump our bags. It is also a place where hairdressers are able ‘to fit the odd one in’, as they say in the trade, and Mrs Froud was at last able to have her hair cut; Smith and Howe Studio near the Post Office being the heroes of the hour.

After a very nice lunch (including a flat white coffee complete with customary fern in the froth, see picture), at a nearby alley mall, we headed off to Waitangi, where the famous treaty was signed between the ruling Maori chiefs and representatives of The Crown. It is the location of The Treaty House which became the British Residency, the Maori Meeting House, and the boat shed housing the huge Ceremonial War Canoes; all something of a shrine to New Zealanders.

This was followed by a visit to the oldest wooden house in New Zealand (1822), and the oldest stone house (1836), built next to each other at Kerikeri, the site of one of the earliest landings of British settlers in New Zealand.

Home then and the evening saw us having a very good meal in a local eating house, more quality than quantity this time so the diet has begun (perhaps)!