Kaiapoi, Pegasus, Woodend

Wednesday 13th March and it was well time to move on from Christchurch with us needing to be back in Whakatane for a brief time in early April. It was a nice warm day and we spent it at the Waimakariri River Mouth alongside  dozens of other hopefuls.

No fish at our possi!

Hardly any fish caught but a guy not far away from our spot did get a couple of good sized kahawai which made him one of the few lucky ones. No salmon in sight but a kahawai for the smoker would have been exciting.

Kaiapoi New World was our base for 2 nights alongside a couple of other motorhomes and the next morning I had a good wander through the town which somehow seemed a much nicer place than when we visited 6 years ago at which time it still had a lot of earthquake damage to deal with. 

Kaipoi river from town bridge. 

I found a nice hairdresser, Amanda, at the far end of town and had a much needed cut it being nearly 8 weeks since the last one.

Kaiapoi golf club was not far down the road and we were able to get straight out on the course when we arrived with the club members just finishing their Thursday haggle.

This one's going for miles!

A good course with undulating fairways, slow greens from recent coring and easy to find tees, perhaps except for some around the 14th and 15th where they are doing repairs. It seemed like there may still have been some earthquake damage around the 14th. Apparently they have also recently removed about 600 trees resulting in a more links like look, so quite a bit of work in progress.

That night we bought blue cod and chips from the takeaways just around the corner from New World but they were only memorable for being the worse cod and chips on our travels. Kaikoura is the place!
It rained through the night and was still drizzling in the morning making it hard to decide on the plan for the day! We knew we could get a grab one voucher to play on the championship Pegasus Golf Course but didn't want to play in the rain but we drove on out there anyway to have a look at what we know is one of the top 14 courses in NZ.

Claudette, our GPS, was having a cup of tea I think when Len told her where we wanted to go and took us a very long way round, through Tuahiwi, to get there but we passed a really interesting looking house on the way so we forgave her.

Weird and wonderful!

The golf course is basically the entrance way to the very new town of Pegasus and is magnificent for sure, being parklike and manicured with beautiful water features and many lovely newly built houses surrounding the fairways. 

Scary view from the bus - should we or shouldn't we?

It also has lots of hazards apart from the water and lakes with many large deep bunkers, long brown grass on the fairway edges and also, on the 2nd nine, deep wide vegetated, wetland gullies, 50 metres wide, either splitting the fairway or straight in front of the greens with no "going-round" options!

Needless to say, as we sat drinking our coffees, the sky did look like it may start clearing so we bought our grab one voucher - $55 for 2 to play instead of $130 - presented it at the club and set off complete with rain jackets and umbrellas in the drizzle. 

Well manicured course. 

After 3 or 4 holes it did start to clear as we expected and it wasn't long before we needed the umbrellas for shade instead of the rain. Len had a good game as usual and I was happy with my 1st 9 but got freaked out in the 2nd 9 with all the water hazards and vegetated gullies that I had to try to lay up to. 

Skipping along with confidence!

Have I got to get over that lot?!

My final score reflected this very well! However we are both really pleased that we played it - a very awesome and interesting course.

The shower in the clubhouse afterwards was also interesting but in no way awesome. The worst shower ever with the thin spray spreading out over the entire area of the large cubicle wetting everything except me - towel, clothes, shoes, bag - and no matter how much I moved around I couldn't find a sprinkle of spray strong enough to even get the soap off. And Len's was the same - unbelievable for a virtually brand new smart clubhouse. Our bus shower is luxury compared to that experience!

After golf it was just a short drive back to Woodend where we parked for the night behind the St Barnabas Anglican Church, a POP we can stay at for just a $5 donation.

Church security. 

Our home for the night. 

There was just a large pumpkin patch, with many enormous pumpkins in it, between us and the graveyard and I could make a joke here about it being "dead quiet" but that just makes me feel so sick about the terrible news that we heard, after playing golf, about the terrorist attack on the Mosques in Christchurch. So much grief for so many good people and our hearts are just so heavy and saddened thinking about them all. Such horror.