A trip to New Plymouth

Earlier this week, Jo needed to spend a day out on the road doing inspections and assessments with the view to the works program for the next couple of months. Since neither of us had seen New Plymouth, we decided to make a day of it and pack in some exploring between getting the work done.

These two pictures give you a bit of an idea of the condition of the roads just outside Wanganui - bearing in mind that this is the main route between Wanganui and New Plymouth, it looks very narrow and very winding! The speed at which huge trucks travel on these roads is genuinely frightening - anyone who has a heavy duty vehicle license will tell you that their speed limit is 90km/h - but I defy you to find two trucks in a row who keep to that limit! Any of you who ever wondered about the 'cuts' which road builders do alongside a main route can see an example of one in the picture above. Jo reckons that in South Africa, that pyramid of ground would have been removed but evidently, here it is not cost effective to do so - plenty of other things have to be done to ensure that the whole thing doesn't come crashing down onto unsuspecting passing motorists.


There was a meeting of minds outside New Plymouth in the vicinity of this marvellous view and while Jo and two other 'padmakers' from Hamiliton (of all places) checked out viability and traffic flow issues at an intersection, I waited in the car and took the picture below.

There are a few glimpses of the sea en-route into New Plymouth but this picture is the first time one can see a bit of the town itself beside the sea. Once we had checked out the complaint about 'sinking' of a small piece of the road at one of the intersections in town, we wandered down to the main seaside road, along which there are many campsites and resorts. There is a pretty good playground area for children on a huge grassy patch beside a big water slide which we imagine is crawling with tourists in the summer time. On this day there were a couple of folks out walking their dogs and a few Moms with toddlers and prams - everyone bundled up warmly against the cold wind. The beautiful blue and clear sky is very deceptive - in fact it was damn cold that day!

This picture was taken on the outskirts of New Plymouth just before you actually hit the main street. The roundabout is just ahead and is one of the things that you have to become very accustomed to very quickly since they are everywhere! The tower is part of a museum/art gallery affair and has a decidedly Tudor feel about it. We find that it's interesting that most of the towns in New Zealand have Maori names - such as Phakapapa - remembering of course that 'ph' is pronounced 'f' - but all the streets in the town have incredibly English names like Wilkshire Crescent or Devon Downs and so on. The big cities are of course very English, but as soon as the population is less than that of a big city we are into the Maori names for towns.

Note the Beetle parked on the right! Dis al!