40th Birthday Cake and a trip to Tui HQ

The weather gods are smiling down on us at Pahiatua for our caravan club’s 40th birthday celebrations.  With lovely sunshine and no wind we took advantage of the pleasant conditions to while away an hour or two sitting and chatting together outside.  Our President Derek formally welcomed us all to the rally and the birthday cake was cut.  It’s such a big cake it will do for a couple of morning teas, I think.

Happy 40th Birthday to Heretaunga Caravan Club

Then Derek welcomed new members Charlie and Lorraine into our club.

We took a trip to the “world famous Tui Brewery in Mangatainoka” in the afternoon.    The plan was for the blokes to partake in a Tui beer (or two)  and the ladies could be more civilised and have a coffee, if they wished.  Or a beer maybe, it was up to them. 

The famous Tui Brewery tower

One of the many humorous Tui signs

The garden bar was humming, full of  people everywhere.  A group of bikies who had their bikes close by, we noticed.  They obviously didn’t want to leave them out of sight in the car park and had brought them into the garden bar with them.  After they had finished, they started up their bikes with a hiss and a roar as they noisily departed.  There were a sprinkling of kids with their parents, young people and plenty of oldies like us.  We finally found ourselves a table or two, and sat in the sunshine while we supped on our own particular choice of coffee or beer.

  Bill, Derek and Robin at Tui HQ

In the evening we got together in the camp lounge and enjoyed watching a slide show of club happenings from years gone by.  There were plenty of exclamations as we all saw younger and slimmer versions of ourselves without a grey hair to be seen.  Thanks to Selwyn for providing the equipment for the slide show. 

We were asked to bring along a block of our favourite cheese for the Wine and Cheese event after the slide show.  What a tasty lot of cheese there was to sample.  The blue cheese soon disappeared, people either love this or hate it.  Then we had several yummy fruit cheeses, a feta topped with chilli, and a block of English Cheshire purchased at the English Corner Dairy in Auckland, and plenty of others to try.  It was a great evening, we really enjoyed ourselves.