This morning, after packing up, it was a walk along the beach, up the steps to the Castlepoint lighthouse, on to the lookout, and back along the rocks. Castlepoint is beautiful, with its grey sand beach and rocky headland. It’s a place we hope to come back to.
Then it was back on the road. Instead of going back to Masterton and on to Highway 2, we took a secondary route to Tinui, the place where the first Anzac memorial service was held in New Zealand. So moving to see the small memorial listing the names of those young soldiers who died. The wooden church has been shifted from its original site because it had been flooded so many times. It’s still being settled in to its new location. The steeple hasn’t been replaced and the windows are boarded up.
Not long after Tinui we turned on to a winding shingle road through bush to the crossroads at Alfredton, where we took left on to Route 52 in the expectation of getting to Eketahuna. We needed to find a petrol station as the gauge was getting down to the last quarter, and there was nothing at Alfredton.
I know we’re dunces when it comes to navigation, but this one takes the cake even for us. We somehow missed the turn-off from Route 52 to Ekatahuna, and ended up in Masterton after all, having taken the scenic and circuitous route. After that small hitch, it was along Highway 2 past Eketahuna, a stop at the Mt Bruce bird sanctuary, past the Tui sign at Mangatainoka, and on past Wimbledon to Herbertville and our bed for the night in the local camp ground.
Off Highway One 