Day 6 - The Falls and the View

Well hello have you missed me? Or should I say us?! (Still getting used to that one!) So, where did we leave it....I think we had just had a lovely night in the city with some of the gang and we had headed home filled on nitrogen ice cream and slightly squiffy....

So we started day 6 (Thursday) with a lay in for the boy and I took myself off to the end of the road to catch up with this malarkey whilst he snored (thankfully now resembling a small rodent rather than a rhino).

Once we were up and ready we meandered down to Brighton in Herbie for a spot of brekkie by the sea on this (finally) beautifully sunny warm day.  V loved the English named seaside town and we wandered up the little high street before finding a spot for food followed by a stroll up the pier (actually Jetty) watching the normally crystal blue ocean turning brown after the recent rain and winds churned up the seabed.  Just like Margate....

Next stop was a NP not too far out of the city that, for the purpise of this exercise, I will call Moriati (as in Sherlock Holmes arch rivel) Falls purely because its name was so extremely similar but un-speallable I just called it that all day. We eventually found it after a rater tense and all too common sat nag moment which did result in us finding a road that we both agreed would need to be explored later.  Anyho, back to the NP and whatever you wanted to call it did not change the fact that it was gorgeous and we chose a walk through to the first falls, past caves and a river running full, again due to the recent weather. It was a beautiful couple of hours in the dappled sunshine and the falls were gorgeous as was walking hand in hand with my man, exactly 18 months after we had first met, sitting opposite each other on our first date, discussing our love of travel and adventure, where we'd been and where we'd love to go. And here we were. Ahhhh (it's ok mushy stuff over!)

Walk done, we headed off up the Norton Summit Road which we had stumbled across by sat nag accident earlier, and wow, what a road it was, funnily enough winding through the hills up up and up some more to the unsurprisingly named, Norton Summit.  The views from up here of the gully we had just been through and the hills and ocean beyond were spectacular and as we were thinking about our decent we made the fabulous decision to stop for a drink at the aptly named, Scenic Hotel (not to be confused with one of a similar name in Canada where a deranged Jack Nicholson attempted to murder his family after going quite spectacularly mad whilst writing a book....hang on, not such a far fetched idea me thinks).

One drink in this friendly, wonderful establishment, sitting on the balcony with a view to die for, listening to the intensely irritating voice of a cyclist jabbering on to his friends about his 2 wheeled prowess to the point of wanting to ram my fist down his throat and pull out his vocal chords, led to two and then three and finally dinner with a beautiful sunset all thrown in for good measure.  We also had the pleasure of chatting to a lovely local lady who often came to enjoy the view over a glass of wine and dinner with her book, and as we chatted with her about her travels in England she reminded me of me on previous travels here where couples would often chat to me.

Our goodbyes said and bill paid (after walking down the steps to the car and remembering we hadn't paid, and the lovely waiter telling us it would have been ok they'd have charged us twice next time....bugger.  Opportunity missed there...) we headed back down the road, now in the darkness but with the city lit up and sparkling below us.  Beautiful.  A quick pit stop at Windy Point (windy as in wind, not windy as in wind.....oh you get what I mean) and it was finally home to bed happy, chilled, slightly squiffy (me as he was driving) and ready to embark on our last full day in this great place with wonderful friends .

But that is for next time, so if you haven't got fed up with the drivel I keep churning out, I will say, as always, TTFN xxxx

EEEEEEEEEEKKKKKK!