Fox River walk, Mitchell's Gully Goldmine, Westport golf

Let's do this one!

It was a good day for the Fox River walk which is part of the Inland Pack track and we set off straight after breakfast. 

A gorgeous gorge walk.

The track is rougher than the Porarari River Track with some muddy patches and twice as long but a good walk up & down through the bush again seeing both weka and wild goats. 

Two wild goats if you look closely. 

Beech leaf carpet.

The plan was to carry on to the Ballroom Overhang and we thought from what we had read that there were just 2 river crossings but realised later that the 2 river crossings relate to the Inland track and not ours, the last so-called 30 minutes of the Fox River Track to the Ballroom being up the river bed entailing 8 river crossings each way, 16 in total and then the wide one earlier on that you do twice if you include the return journey.

Shod gorge Walker!

Barefoot ??

The river crossings were fine except for the first one where I was attacked by voracious sandflies which seemed to love the deet I had applied. However  it took me almost the whole outward journey to realise that it was best not to bother taking off my shoes and socks as I painstakingly did for ages - not only time-consuming but more slippery on the stones with them on! After our first 1.5 hours of quite easy walking, purely because of the shoes and socks thing, it took us much longer than the estimated  30 minutes to get up the riverbed and boy was I sick of walking over those stones and boulders, half the time in my bare feet as the crossings were so close. Once I kept my shoes on I was much speedier and more comfortable - should have worn my walking sandals like Len.

No band to bring the roof down

....thank goodness!

The Ballroom Overhang is quite spectacular, being an overhead half dome carved into the limestone by the bend of the river. The layers of colours create a memorable effect. You can camp in this area but it felt a little eerie to me.

We saw no one else on this walk until we stopped for lunch on our return. 3 others came towards us as we were eating and then we saw another couple of ladies from Christchurch once we were on the trail again. Much quieter than the Porarari track we did the previous day. I have to say I was a trifle tired when we got back to the bus 5 hours later but after a coffee we were on the road again heading for Westport.

Oops!!

Before leaving we saw a tour bus and trailer which had driven a bit too close to the road edge!

The tiny settlement of Charlestown is well known for its historic goldmining so just to the north we stopped to visit Mitchell's Gully Goldmine - I think it was the natural fruit ice-cream van sitting outside the mine that made Len put his foot down harder on the brake though.

Just one of many tunnels. 

...and one more. 

The Goldmine was interesting with lots of long tunnels that you definitely need a torch for - thank goodness for cellphones with torches.

Water wheel and stamper.

Most of the time we were with another couple of ladies and their 2 children.
And, by the way, the icecreams afterwards were good.

Yummmm!

The next stop was The NZMCA Park in Westport, close to the beach, where there were probably about 10 vans parked for the night. There had been a fire, which was still smouldering, in the scrub  between us and the beach but we saw a fireman, checking it both last night and this morning.

This morning, Friday, it was overcast with very light drizzle which we knew would clear so it was time for golf again, this time on the Westport links course - bumpy and dry but still with some green patches between all the brown. Very few people here but we enjoyed our non-pressured game finding the ball ran really well on the fairways which weren't actually that evident from the outlying areas. Quite a lot of bunkers but no water hazards.

Afterwards we had another walk down the road and onto Carters Beach which is very wide and sandy and  looks very safe compared to the coastline we have past so far. We weren't tempted to have a swim though as the wind had got up making it feel a little cool and not indusive to sitting on the sand to dry.

Tonight we are staying here, at the golf club. There's meant to be rain coming soon so I'm looking forward to a day or 2 of rest, maybe reading a book!