The Saturday certainly wasn’t a disaster, we will come to that later. Our journey to Hamilton was an adventure, mainly because Wendy was navigating and she enjoys an off-map adventure. This time it involved a Maritime Museum miles from the sea, a visit to the L&P cafe and a trip down a gorge that was gorgeous (see what I did there?) travelling via the New Zealand goldfields.
No, it was the Sunday that proved problematic but not in the morning. The morning was amazing because we visited Hamilton Gardens. Someone, some young, enthusiastic person has decided to transform the old public gardens into a wonderland, an art gallery of gardens from all over the world and it is magic.
There is the Kitchen Garden (with scarecrows), a modern garden, an Indian Garden, a Chinese, Japanese, West coast USA garden and the most spectacular was the Mansfield Garden from Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party.
There are fantasy gardens from CS Lewis to Lewis Carroll
We did the river cruise into the centre of town, which was very peaceful.
And then we went for lunch.
And that is when disaster struck.
We were going to go to Hobbiton on our way south the next day but when we looked online at lunchtime it was fully booked….
To Middle Earth and Beyond 