Well today has been a very long day.

I left Wanganui at 10am with the plan to be in Wellington a little after 1.30pm.

Normally it takes a little over two hours to get to Wellington from Wanganui but because I had the day spare I decided to head through the Manuwatu Gorge and Rimutakas for the fun of it.

My new GPS unit had a fun time trying to workout how to drive through the Gorge. It was determined to get me to drive to Palmerston North first, even though I had been told to go through Fielding, Bunnythorpe, and Ashurst. Normally when you go off the course it has plotted for you it just finds a new route. But not this time. It was determined that I turn around and go back to its planned route. When I didn’t it did everything possible to get me to drive through Palmerston North including just before the Gorge telling me to turn right and drive to Palmy.

The Gorge was abosolutely amazing to drive through. I would have loved for someone else to be with me to take photos. I will definately have to come back in summer with someone. Once through the Gorge I headed to Woodville and down State Highway Two to Mangatainoka where the Tui Brewary is located.

At around 12.30pm I stopped for lunch at Mc Donalds in Masterton. I got quite annoyed at the wait for a cheeseburger - it took twenty five minutes to be served.

Jumping back onto the road I headed south and through the Rimutakas. Again that was great fun - but I wished that I had someone else to take some photos. Although, it was slightly frustrating being stuck behind a slow moving car and then a truck.

Coming into Wellington I headed through Upper Hutt and Lower Hutt. If I was to ever move to Wellington I would live there. It looked like quite a nice place to live - particularly Lower Hutt.

I eventually arrived in Wellington a little before 3.30pm. Yes it had taken more then 5 hours for a trip that should have taken a little over 3. That was primarily due to Mc Donalds being useless, stopping briefly at the beer factory, and slow cars on the road with little room for passing.

Stayed tuned for the journey back on Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday…

Tags: Driving, Manuwatu, Masterton, Tui Beer, Wanganui, Wellington, Woodville

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 17th, 2008 at 7:41 pm and is filed under New Zealand, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.