WAIKATO: Keeping up with the Joneses

Four and a half months is a very long time without a proper home-cooked meal. Don't get me wrong, we've really enjoyed all the weird and wonderful things we've tasted around the world, and even campsite cooking has been fun - but food tastes different when you're in a family home...


Gwenfair's Great-Uncle Hubert Jones set up home in New Zealand in the 1950s - and its his family who have been keeping us very well fed over the last week or so. First off was a meal with Roger and Julie in Auckland, who welcomed us to their dinner table with barely a day's notice of our being in their city. Then, after a few days exploring in the Northlands, we parked up our campervan outside Diana and Gordon's home in Cambridge and unloaded tons of dirty washing.

We were overwhelmed by their hospitality over the weekend, and taken to see some of Waikato's wonders like the glow-worms at Waitomo, and the beaches at Raglan. Then there was even more home-cooked food to be enjoyed with a visit to Hubert and his wife Kathleen on Sunday evening, for a nice big family meal and a few stories about what it was like for a Welshman to arrive in New Zealand half a century ago.




After so much feasting, we've spent the last few days walking off those second and third helpings - taking on an 18.5km walk up the volcanic hills at the Tongariro crossing, and soaking our bones in the thermal waters. But the family food supply is still ongoing, as we left Cambridge with a bountiful supply of homegrown tomatoes, beans, herbs and chillies as well as plums and oranges - I get the feeling we certainly won't starve while we're in New Zealand.