Saturday was a designated quiet day after our travels. We were up early to go to the Farmers' Market in Gisborne a ten minute walk away from Andy and Sally's house. The market fills quite a large area and comprises of a proper fruit and vegetable market under covered stalls. The market had three wine producers, a coffee stall and a bakery as well as a doughnut and fruit juice stall. The crowd was quite large and we were there for about an hour. There is always something pleasant about travelling around a market, vegetables we had never seen, Kamo Kamo which looked like a round courgette but which apparently is more like a marrow. It was a a good experience although we didn't purchase much, Andy and Sally bought vegetables of all sorts.
After the market we returned home for lunch before spending a quiet afternoon. Andy and I went to look at some tent s which were on display on a green down by the river. They were all Coleman tents and they were all for sale at a reduced rate. There were some excellent tents there but I could hardly come back and tell the tour manager that I had bought a new tent!
As we were standing there looking at the tents we noted that on the other side of the river, the Santa parade was assembling so we wandered over to have a look at that. There is something very strange about watching a Christmas parade in thirty degrees of heat. There were twenty seven floats in the parade, mainly school and nursery groups although the local MP had a float and the local Phillipino group also had a walking display. The last float was of course Santa on a sleigh and to my eyes as I felt my arms sunburning it was all rather strange.
After the excitement of the Santa parade we walked home for dinner and a bottle of wine.