We left Rotorua behind yesterday morning and drove into the traffic snarls of south Auckland.  After a very slow crawl along the motorway, we skirted across towards the west, leaving the suburbs behind.  Shelly Beach is a tiny spot at the end of a twisting narrow road.  It consists of three roads, a cluster of houses overlooking the water, a jetty, a large car park for cars and boats, a grassy campground, and the Jetty Café.

Sheer orange cliffs rise from the water’s edge, and there is a walking track across the top.  We can see numerous islands in the inlet, as well as a variety of boats going back and forth.  It’s very quiet and picturesque.  Before leaving home, Ian suggested I go for a drive to find Weld (the fictitious town where “800 Words” is set). I don’t think I need to go very far. It’s on my doorstep.

Our home for the week is called Fishermans Lodge. It’s double storey with lovely views from the top deck. With luck we’ll get some good sunsets.  Prue and I are sharing an attic bedroom which is very cute and comfy.  While not as upmarket as Stonefields, it’s got all we need, and we’ve settled in nicely.

I went for a walk along the jetty this morning and had fun watching the white fronted terns performing a synchronized dive off their railing. This place is a fishing paradise, but swimming is not recommended!

Today was the official start of the World Masters Orienteering Championships (WMOC), with a Sprint Model event at a university campus.  A model event is non competitive – you take a map and navigate at your own pace to the controls in any order you like. It’s designed to familiarise yourself with the mapping style for the competitions.  Having done a lot of sprints at a lot of campuses, we probably didn’t learn anything new.  We will need good eyesight to discern the very fine details.  We had a pleasant wander, met up with people we knew, and some that we didn’t.  A man from Denmark introduced himself as Tove Kristiansen (spelling may not be right), and told us he lived in Melbourne and used to be a DROC member back in the 1970s! He’d spotted the lyrebird on our polo shirts.

Off to dinner at the café – the fish could not get any fresher! I had a Hoki burger and kumara wedges.  Totally delicious.