Saturday 3rd March. Wellington. New Zealand.

Up at 7am to wave the group that are touring on Bon Voyage.

Breakfast this morning at Eclipse on Willis with Janet.

Carrying on yesterday's theme I set out to find the marker to the shoreline of the City of Wellington in 1840 which is located on Tory Street and offers a fine perspective of just how much land reclaimation there has been in Wellington.

I also find the site on Manners where Wellington's first theatrical performance took place on May 11th 1843. This site is also where New Zealand's first purpose built theatre, The Royal Victoria stood, opening on 12th September 1843. The site is now a modern bank.

Collected from my hotel I head out to Silverstream where I will spend the next two days as a guest of the President of the Wellington English-Speaking Union Jim Milburn and his wife Barbara.

As I say my life goes from the sublime to the ridiculous and ESU New Zealand must be feeling a little the same. Hosting their second distinguished visitor this week they have gone from Lord Hunt of the Wirral to me?

I am in the historic Hutt Valley. The first township in the Wellington region was laid out by the New Zealand Company at Petone (Pito-one)near the Hutt River mouth in 1840. Known as Britannia, it was prone to flooding and by September most of the settlers had moved across the river founding the city of Wellington.

This afternoon Jim, David and I take a drive through the beautiful Whiteman's Valley and have lunch at The Short Straw Cafe. After lunch our drive continues through the valley to Plateau Stores for ice-cream before we take a tour of Timberlea with its low income housing and social deprivation. My tour of the area concludes in Upper Hutt.

Back at the Milburn's we have cocktails in the garden before supper and that New Zealand past-time of Rugby. The local team the Hurricane's are playing tonight at Palmerston North and so we all settle down to enjoy the game.