Inauspicious Start

After breakfast at Kelvin and Paulines we pack our things into the campervan, say our goodbyes to the lovely Greyskull the cat and make our way up north through some torrential rain.  

Greyskull the cat

The combination of lush green hills and horizontal rain make us both feel a little homesick for Scotland but we are finally on our way.

We make our way gingerly through the rain up to Northland, via the Kauri Museum in Matakohe  where we see some of the impressively large Kauri trees.

Diameter approx 1.5 times Mrs M !

From the Kauri Museum we head for Dargaville which is the Kumara capital of New Zealand for a few last minute shopping bits before we reach our first motorcamp at Baylys Beach.

As we check in for our powered campervan site the helpful lady at reception warns us to be careful on the site as they have had very heavy rain for the last few days and some of the ground is a little soft.  So we make our way onto the site and find what looks like a good empty berth.  Heeding the advice I get out the van and walkover the site to see how firm it is.  Confident that it isn't too soft I then nose the van into the bay in front before reversing in, and get well and truly stuck in the mud...  

The bay in front clearly wasn't as firm as first thought.  A couple of attempts to get out just continues to dig us deeper and deeper into the mud.  

At this point a number of things happen - 

• The man from the static caravan opposite comes out to tell us this 'happens all the time'.
• The friendly man from the camp site arrives in his 4x4 to pull us out.
• Mrs M is mortified that we are stuck in the mud on our first site.

The friendly man then fails to make our rather large and heavy campervan move with his 4x4 which doesn't help Mrs M's mood very much, but he then comes back with a bigger and heavier 4x4 and eventually gets us out (after digging a 6" deep trench in the camp site.

All in not the most auspicious start to campervaning for us !

Mr M