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Another glorious day to wake up to. The van was like a greenhouse. Lovely waking up being all toasty. I ran across the railway line and along the beachside for a different perspective of Okiwi Bay. After yesterday’s walk the legs were a tad sore but it feels good to actually be active again (even if it is only for 10mins each day). Our drive took us north to Blenheim in Marlborough County. The scenery changed from mountainous and rocky to hilly green pastures of a Teletubby land look to acres and acres of flat land covered in vines. We are in Wine Country. Where one of our favourite Sauvignon Blancs are produced by Oyster Bay (introduced to us by Dulcie & Ben on our visit to Vancouver a few years ago). ...

Woken up by the sun beaming through the curtains. Dragged Matt out for a run too and he sped off ahead of me uphill to Okiwi lookout. Stunning views of the sea, train track & our little van the only vehicle in the campsite. It was knackering. Popped across the road to have breakfast with the back doors open over the sea. The drive back to Kaikoura was a completely different story from the drive out to the campsite. The air was clear and we could see rows of mountains some a little dappled with snow. ...

Groundhog day. Woke up at the same campsite, did another 10 minute run and sat outside the library using the free wifi. What an exciting life we are leading. Better than working. SCF is really taking off and Matt has had more journalists contacting him. One from the BBC online Technology section today. Yesterday it was the Guardian newspaper. And to top it off he was on BBC Lincolnshire last night so we listened to the clip they’d sent him and laughed and learned a few things about radio shows :). To be fair he had been in a hotel room in Bangkok at the time with no time to prepare. ...

No we’re not back in Kuala Lumpur. Matt has found a spare 5 mins for creating time-lapsing goodness. Here’s one from the Skybar, Trader’s Hotel at sunset.

Kelloggs sunshine breakfast. A beautiful day and a beautiful walk up Conical Hill to 560m with 360 degree view across Hurunui. And gnome-friendly funghi. We’d been without wifi for 2 days and the withdrawal symptoms were showing. As luck would have it the local library has wifi so we parked up outside to get our free fix. 4 hours later and laptop batteries dead we realise we missed our opportunity to drive to Kaikoura and have ended up back at Alpine holiday park. ...

We can’t believe how much water we use and how much waste we make. This is an eye-opener. We have no more water again and we need to empty everything. Our tank holds 91 litres and apparently the shower uses 10 litres a minute. Can’t quite believe it. Shared the driving today. A little scary at first on the winding roads after 8 months of no driving but it was like riding a bike and I soon got back into it. It meant Matt could see more of the scenery. And what scenery. We headed 70km along the same road back to Hanmer Springs and the sun was out at last, the skies were blue, grey and white, there were rainbows here and there and the colours of the trees, fields, rocks, rivers were an overload for the eyes. ...

That muddy field we were in had increased in bogginess overnight and also half-filled with anorak-covered people putting up tents whilst we were eating brekkie which meant fun for us getting out. We discovered today that our campervan doesn’t have great traction so we slid about all over the place trying to manoeuvre around tents, cars & vans to just about get out safely. We also discovered that although we thought the grey water indicator wasn’t working it in fact is. And a blocked shower and sink aren’t good to have when off-roading. The sink aggressively threw washing up water all over the floor. ...

It’s raining. Quick trip to Spencer Beach to see the sea & sand minus sun. Found the Department of Conservation (DOC) centre after our 2nd attempt to arm ourselves with a list of the DOC campsites across New Zealand which are much cheaper than commercial sites or even free. Went in search of the first motorhome dumpstation getting lost a couple of times circling Christchurch. The not so glorious side of campervanning is getting rid of waste water and filling up with new water. We decided to only fill up clean water and leave the rest as we were sure it couldn’t be full yet. I found out that I shouldn’t trust Matt with the tap end of a hosepipe. Apparently he was just wondering what would happen if he turned it on full blast. He now knows that it drenches the person stood at the other end. ...

First aftershock felt this morning at the hostel. I was sat checking my email and Matt was coming out of the shower. It felt really surreal. Everything seemed to shudder but you couldn’t put your finger on what moved or even if you moved. The sound was like someone running across a landing with hobnail boots on but we were on the ground floor. The adrenaline pumped for a few minutes afterwards. ...

Mmmm beans on toast. Lush. Booked our campervan. Have opted for the posh option because we’re old fogies and would kill each other being cramped into a VW with only enough headspace for a hobbit. SCF update: 280,000 unique visitors in the past week. That is an 35,600% increase!