Hi Nyrem & Dan,

We visited New Plymouth when we first got here when we were deciding where to settle. It's a lovely town, quite small but everything you could probably need (shop-wise) in the high street, as well as a few bars and cafes, and a supermarket or 2. The people seemed friendly (although we only stayed 1 night as we were on a whirlwind tour) and it's got a nice feel to the place. I think house-wise, there are few places to avoid, like Whitiera (not sure of the spelling there!) and maybe a few other areas, but the centre of NP and places like Fitzroy seemed nice. It's nowhere near as big as Palmerston North Dan, but it has most of the amenities you would need.

The beaches are stunning and, although they're black sand, they're good enough to sit out on in the sun I'd say, and there's lots of surf beaches close by too.

I reckon they'd support the Tarakani rugby team, cos there's signs up all over the place saying 'go the Naki!', but being a girl :icon_biggrin: , I'm not too sure whether thats the NPC or the other league... :icon_eek: icon_exclaim.gif

So all in all, we found New Plymouth to be a really nice place, and Mt Egmont is stunning.

However, it wasn't on our short list of places to consider settling because it's just [b:d3bd78fe86]so far away from anything[/b:d3bd78fe86]! It would be an ideal place if you want remoteness, peace and a quiet, slow paced way of life, which we do, but I also like to be near to a larger centre so that you can get the entertainment, big range of shops, things to do, job opportunites etc. This was our biggest concern - I think we would really have struggled to find 1 decent paying job out there, let alone 2!

Also, because it's stuck right out on the west coast, it takes ages to get to the nearest large town, ie Hamilton, Taupo or Wanganui/Palmerston North. You can't go through the Egmont National Park (or over the mountain of course! ::): ) you have2 go right round the edge which is a pain and takes quite a while! I think it took us 2 hours to get to Wanganui because although it doesn't look that far on the map, the roads are really crap and you can barely do 80k's cos there's great big potholes and divits all over the place. (Unless you want to wreck your car, then you can do 100k! :icon_rolleyes: ) One thing we wanted to do when we came over here is to take advantage of the country and head off for weekends away, but if we did that from NP, we'd be quite limited as to where we could realisticly go without taking hours to get there, and without having to fly.

As for the places you mentioned Nyrem, I can't help you I'm afraid, as we only visited New Plymouth, but I hope some of this info will be useful for you!

Hope this helps peeps!

Jod
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