It’s been a little quiet around here for the last few days. The first reason for this is that a friend and I have been busy setting up a new project: WollyDong.com. The other is that it was my 28th birthday last Saturday and we headed out of town for the weekend and up north to a place called Matakana.

Matakana, situated in Rodney District, is a small village just off a roundabout by a river. We stopped for a cream tea and a rest before heading through the rain into the village. We were fortunate enough to turn up during the weekly Farmer’s Market, which was pretty cool. Loads of local people selling locally made foods, drinks, sauces, you name it! We invested in some Feijoa, lime and chili sauce. Excellent on pizzas!

We stayed up the road in Leigh, in the Leigh Sawmill Cafe to be exact. The rooms were nice and big, with a tidy ensuite. I always love it when a lodge has a shower floor, rather than a step in shower, and that’s precisely what our room at the Sawmill had. It’s probably just an excuse not to worry about getting the bathroom floor wet more than anything else, but I love shower floors!

We rested our wet and tired souls for an hour or so in the afternoon, before heading for a wine taste at Heron’s Flight. We were served by the drummer from Kiwi band The Brunettes, which meant the chat was pretty interesting. He knew a fair bit about the wine as well!

We headed back to the Sawmill and, after establishing that we really should have booked a table, the cafe and micro brewery served us up some excellent pizzas, wedges and risotto. The beer was pretty good too!

The next day, we had a quick look at Goat Island before breakfast. The island is a protected area with no fishing allowed. This results in quite a lot of fish hanging out and you often see them leaping out of the water in front of you. We then spent the afternoon having a wander round Tawharanui Reserve, which turned into a bit of a long trek after we passed through the first field of bullocks and decided that we couldn’t do that again!

All in all, a good weekend. I feel I must apologise for the somewhat briefness of my descriptions on here. The reasons for this are because I plan to launch a proper travel review site very soon and I want to review Matakana properly on there as my first location. All in good time, all in good time…