Palmerston, Naseby & Omakau

It's now Wednesday and we have just had a very windy, rocky night in the camping ground at Omakau and there is a severe rain warning out so we are pleased not to be biking the rail trail yet even though I'm getting a little frustrated waiting for the weather to settle. We have just made the decision to start our 4 days cycling tomorrow whatever as there looks to be a little window before lots of rain again next week.

Trish's fruity rum balls - mmmm!

We are going to hire comfy bikes from shebikeshebikes and they will arrange the transport we need to get back to Debussy each day. Great company to deal with and they had it all sorted in no time.
To regress, from Katiki beach where there was a vast colony of ladybirds - 10 per square inch in the grass and always several on our bodies (4 days later and we are still finding them in the bus!) we passed through tiny Palmerston which has two 4 Square grocery shops close to each other, as does Ranfurly, and stopped to play golf at the Ardleigh Course -interesting, challenging and hilly. We stayed there the night and were joined by 2 other motorhomes as it is listed as a POP in our NZMCA book.
From there we travelled on to Ranfurly and played another round of golf ( and stayed) at their Maniatoto Course which was flat and very exposed to the strong winds on part of the course.
Tuesday was a diverse day - we drove North to the little settlement of Naseby, an attractive old gold-mining village built in the 1860s and walking through the streets you almost felt you were back in that time. It is 2002 feet above sea level and only has a permanent population of 100 but is well-known in NZ for its indoor curling rink - the only rink in the Southern Hemisphere used exclusively for curling. So of course we had to have a go! We loved it and found it to be very like bowls but the stones are heavier at 20kg and you are playing on ice. You don't lift the stones however, just slide them - I found it easier to use a pole to push them but had to be careful not to use too much power.

Is it the perfect weight & direction?

After our enjoyable game on the curling rink we stripped off most of the layers of clothing we had needed to don and drove up the gravelly Dansey Pass road as far as the beautiful old Dansey Pass Hotel which was well worth the trip. It is a elongated oasis right on the road edge in the middle of nowhere and was originally built in 1863 for the local gold-diggers - on the way there we had passed a family from a motorhome gold-panning in the river. They have kept the character of the hotel with refurbishments over the years and although dark inside with all the stained wood and big low brown sofas it has a very welcoming comfortable feel, accentuated by the huge open fireplace with its schist hearth and by the patron who was on the piano when we entered.

Cheers!

It is known to have good food but unfortunately we were too early for dinner so instead we enjoyed a really late lunch of delicious pumpkin soup, chicken nibbles and spicy wedges.
Then we headed back down the road and onto Omakau, which is on the path of the cycle route, stopping for the night in the Recreation Reserve which has low cost camp facilities. So tomorrow we will bike from here to Alexandra and Clyde from where the cycle company will return us to Debussy.