Kiri

We met on the Paihiatua track turnoff at the Antiques shop - a Kawazaki er6n, two aquillas, two shadows, a trumpy and of course a harley, you can't really go anywhere in NZ without one of them showing up

We left just after 8am, and set off down highway 57 in dismal - need your wet weather gear - rain. By the time we hit the gorge the weather was looking a bit brighter, and the traffic was minimal. The gorge was fairly good this day (stuff-all grit on the road) and the Harley sportster loved it! So did my hyosung, but the poor thing stuggled to keep up. By the time we stopped to fuel up at Woodville I could smell the burning rubber and god knows what else! But the sun was shinning and my wee 250 was only making the occasional screaming noise when the speedo was at 120, so I figured it was succumbing to the 'need for speed' and kept going.

Normally there's quite a bit of road works on highway 2, but the road was entirely clear and the traffic was thin that early in the morning. We'd planned and hoped that most holidayer's had reached their destinations and where staying there for Easter Sunday and certainly that morning it felt as though there was just us on the road.

We reached Norsewood just in time for morning T (tea and scones), then sadly the harley and one of the aquillas left us, kids to attend to and all that stuff. The rest of us continued on to Hastings and arrived at about 10.30ish. The markets are a great pit-stop with organic bacon sandwiches, fresh coffee, live music and a bunch of other food - take your saddle bags and plan to fill them. http://www.foodhawkesbay.co.nz/index...ket/index.html

From there we headed over to Napier for lunch at one of the wineries, we had more great food, stocked up on some cellar door sales. then headed home along highway 50. That was the intention, but we got a tad lost trying to find our way out of Napier and had to stop to get directions, silly signs, and what is up with the Hawkes Bay penchant for roundabouts? Anyway we eventually got the 'hell out of there,' and had a great ride along that highway - there's just enough bends to keep it interesting. Although annoyingly there was some roadwork being done out by the vineyards, some gravel and whatnot - what I don't get is that we all know there's public holidays coming up and certainly there's going to be more traffic on the roads, so why the %$^# don't they plan to finish all roadworks by those dates?!!!

Anyway by the time we hit highway 2 again the roads were packed, which made for some fun weaving and general speedy overtakes, quite exciting really. We pulled over again at Norsewood for a break, but alas the cafe was closed, so we decided to head through to Dannivirke for a cuppa or in my case a 'V.'

The Kawazaki left us at Dannivirke, and after our reststop we 'booted' it home and got back around 5ish.

All in all a good day!