I  live in Wellington New Zealand, a place I really love. Situated on the Cook Strait, on lower North  Island, this is NZs Capital City by the sea (200,000 /420K in the region). It’s a great place to live with lots of things to do, flourishing Arts, good restaurants and great coffee! Read more...

I  live in Wellington New Zealand, a place I really love. Situated on the Cook Strait, on lower North  Island, this is NZs Capital City by the sea (200,000 /420K in the region). It’s a great place to live with lots of things to do, flourishing Arts, good restaurants and great coffee! NZ is a remarkable place to live with low population (5M) and its almost endless natural beauty, especially in South Island which is easy to get to from here. My family and I moved out here in 2004 for a 2-year break from the UK, and, well, never went back. We settled, became citizens and this is now definitely our home. We miss it when we travel overseas.

NZ is quite a bit warmer than the UK, has more sunshine, and the winters are much milder. Wellington though is most often Windy. And if you ever need the heat there is always Australia but we rather prefer the climate here and there is nothing here to bite or kill you here like in Aussie.

Lots of ‘tramping’ possible for the active. It is something we now love but never did before we came. Although far away, it doesn’t feel so and we are fortunate to be able to travel  often, including to Europe.

We have an apartment in Welly overlooking the sea but also lucky enough to have a Bach (holiday home) but spend much up the coast in a place called Waikanae Beach. There we are in paradise (warmer by 2 degrees, often no wind and no-one there, yet it’s only 40 minutes drive away). I retired at 71 to take up a number of hobbies including Smartphone photography, relearning guitar  - both jazz and other - and spend a fair amount of time being involved in U3A. All of this gives me little time to do much else although I have been educating myself about our Māori culture and am now learning ‘te reo’. Love the sound of the language.