January 1

Today it was up at 0730, prepare a cup of tea, shower, dress, pack my stuff and check the room was clear once Fran had also finished. The luggage came down with us and we checked out at 0815. With Fran tending the luggage, I got the car and then stopped outside the hotel, loaded up (very quickly) and we were on our way out by 0830.
We were near Colin’s place at 0900 but couldn’t find a shop we were looking for. Using the SatNav (and local knowledge – I interrogated someone waiting at the first shopping centre) I found shopping centres , and we went through two centres before we found shops of the type we were looking for open.
We did our shopping and then had breakfast at Burger King (Hungry Jack’s) as hunger was besetting us (and it was nearly three hours since we got up) and then went back to Colin’s – stymied again as no-one answered, so I left a copy of my book and some chocolates on the back table (I found out later they had just gone into a neighbour’s house before we arrived).
We set off south again, headed into Thames and booked into our motel at about 1230. It had a spa bath (which suited Fran) and WiFi (which suited me). We had our lunch in the room. I set my laptop up to upload the pictures of Bay of Islands (a lot) to Flickr and we headed off to Waihi.
We quickly located the Waihi Visitor Information Centre (okay, I followed the directions of the SatNav) and found a volunteer downstairs who had written a history of the town for the period of interest for me (that is, it included 1907 to 1913). She only had a voter’s roll for 1919, after George Pound had left, but rolls do exist for the period I’m interested in. She suggested visiting the museum, but naturally it was not open today. We walked over from the Visitor Information Centre and had a look at the mine.
On our way out of town I found the museum and two supermarkets, so we were prepared for tomorrow. We then drove to Waihi beach and had a look around, but it was a topical beach holiday centre and very crowded. After, we drove along coast north and stopped in at the Hot Water Beach. It was very crowded, a far cry from the last time I was there (with mum). On the beach, Fran spoke with two girls (one from England, one from Scotland) who were shuffling their feet in the sand to get to the hot water – Fran did too, but I had enough from the last time (I scooped it out with my hands then, ending up with sand embedded under my fingernails).
By the time we left the beach (very crowded, so I had to park quite a distance away) it was 1745 so rather than continue up the peninsula and through Coramandel, we headed back directly to Thames.
We cruised town and did our food shopping at Pack’n’Save and then went back to motel. The parking outside the unit was full, so I had to park down and opposite the unit.
Fran cooked and then we had tea and I uploaded the next set of pictures, processed today’s photos, wrote up blog summaries and rewrote some blogs and posted those I had finished.
Then it was off to sleep!