It’s a public holiday today in celebration of the Queen’s birthday. So we got-up early and were out of the house by 08.00 to travel 1½hrs south of Auckland to Nikau caves   where we had arranged a 10.00 tour of the caves. Nikau caves is set on a private farm and guided tours are given by arrangements by the farm owner. This is a propers cave, health and safety takes a little bit of a back seat, no so much to be unsafe but not so all pervasive that you feel like you don’t need to keep you wits about you.

The caves are reached after a ten minute walk across fields and through native bush. Most of the tour you are walking shin deep in an underground stream and there are a couple of ten meter sections where the roof height is barely a couple of feet high and you crawl in the stream. But every now and again the tunnel opens into huge galleries  with a galaxy of glow-worms twinkles from the roof high above and pillars of stalagmites and stalactites picked out by the beams of the torches we carried.

Ellie, Cari and Meg (twelve, eleven and seven) loved it. Meg particularly so as, given her height advantage, she was able to negotiate most of the route without having to crawl. Even Ruth enjoyed it despite a claimed dislike for confined spaces.

It’s all safe for anyone with common sense but not so safe as to be boring ! Afterwards, soaked through, we got changed had some sandwiches and thanked Phillip Woodward the farmer / shearer / owners who has sheared in South Wales and knows several people back home.