Moving on to Matakana & Brick Bay

Friday 26 September

Our second morning at Uretiti and we woke to glorious sunshine. Packed up Banjo and headed to the beach for a last walk before hitting the road just before check out time at 10am.

After a tricky stop at the dump station in Warkworth (where we were helped out by a lovely smiley guy from Vector) we pressed on to Matakana and took the road towards Tāwharanui… then accidentally sailed past the gate for our POP at Willow Park 😳 With nowhere to turn a big rig we had to head all the way down to the lodge about 8km along the peninsula before we found a suitable driveway to back into & turn around! A gorgeous and very over excited German Shepherd came hurtling out from the Lodge to help us out with our manoeuvre and had to be rescued by some locals! I was rather taken with the house at the end of the driveway we reversed into - wouldn't mind buying this little beauty!

Taking more care, we found the driveway and parked up at a rather busy POP, right by the pond which is home to a gorgeous family of Honk Wah ducks - mum, dad & 6 ducklings 🩶. Disturbed to find that the road from Uretiti had been sooo bumpy that our fridge shelves had gone for a Burton. I had stupidly left some fairly heavy stuff on the top shelf and the lumps and bumps had caused chaos.

Quick lunch then we headed over to Sandspit to our favourite sculpture trail at Brick Bay Winery. It’s been a couple of years since we were last here, but there were many old favourites to enjoy and quite a few new sculptures to explore. My favourite sculptures are always the big Virginia King statement pieces - the gorgeous silver waka in the lake by the glass house and the stunning ghostly kāuri trees hanging in the grove - Aethereum, Ancestral Grove.

The wooden figures facing off across the lake were a new addition, and I recognised them from the last Sculpture on the Gulf I'd visited on Waiheke. And this year's colourful folly was rather fun - called "Femely Velues", the three panels of loom weaving represented weft, warp and final fabric, a celebration of traditionally female crafts and the importance of process and working together.

Set in amongst the gardens and woodlands were a large number of interesting pieces, from the rusted Corton steel structures, assorted stone and metal pieces, a fat Bacchus bunny and a sleek long eared hair, an inflatable triceratops, an angular seal to a stunning stone sail and Ruth Watson's "Other Worlds" - four intriguing celestial bodies exploring our changing understanding of our planet and solar system. The black planet represented carbon sequestration data for earth, the creamy globe was derived from a 17th century religious view of the world without oceans and the grey lumpy sphere showed European Space Agency gravitational field data. I loved that in amongst this artistry, the beauty of nature stood tall and proud in the most stunning koru from a native ponga.

A cheeky Charlies Gelato for Louis on the way back - fig & ginger! I was very taken by Slow Blooms in the store next door - for $5 you could walk through their gardens and collect herbs and flowers for your own use - such a gorgeous concept.

Then back to Willow Park POP for a chill evening of blogging and Only Murders.