Timaru and Seadown

It was a treat to have a nice roast dinner at the RSA before staying in their carpark for the night with 3 other motorhomers, one being a Nissan Civilian bus exactly the same colours as ours which we don't see very often! The owner, from Nelson originally, is living in it permanently.

Thursday morning we played golf at the 18 hole Highfield course in town which is about to be turned into a 9 holer meaning there will no longer be the hills to climb at the far end! 

Keep the head down Lydia!

We set off just before the very friendly competition men and found it quite hard to navigate, often having to walk a long way, sometimes backwards, to the next tee.

Not "planking",just tired!

There were deep, often wet, gullies and little bridges and an interesting par 3 from up high which will be sad if they have to lose it.

The famous Phar Lap.

From here we headed for the Phar Lap Raceway, our campground for the night along with about a dozen other vehicles, amongst them friendly Blen & Irene from Coromandel who would be keen, as we would be, to meet up again if we are up their way. It was very cold overnight going down to 1.7° outside but 7.7° inside and fresh snow on top of the alps. 

A future winner?

It made a change to be able to watch the horses do their training laps around the Raceway which we had a good view of through our big back window.

We went round in circles a bit on leaving the raceway as the first stop was the dump station where there didn't seem to be any potable water so after going back into town to buy some sealant for our leaky new tap from Mitre 10 we returned to the Raceway to fill up with water. Being another good day for golf and lots of courses to play in this area we did the short drive to the Timaru course, known as The Levels and living up to it's name by being the first flat course we seem to have played on for ages. A big hurrah here!!

Timaru "The Levels" golf club. 

The president was very friendly and welcoming and we found out that they don't have a greenkeeper even though there were 3 tractors out mowing grass. I have to say it was really nice not to be puffing up hills in the heat with this course just having tiny mounds, quite a lot of bunkers which Len soon discovered and a couple of big ponds, one in particular being full of fish which the President said Len could try catching although they were very elusive. The greens were fast which takes a bit of getting used to after some slow ones and it was a nice course to play. Good to see a few other people out on it too.

We had a nice little grassy corner to park in by the clubhouse overnight and as there was no shower in the Ladies I managed to use one of the 2 in the Mens with Len keeping watch! No worries.
About 5.00am in the morning Len couldn't get back to sleep as he couldn't get his mind off all the brown trout in the pond so he ended up sitting by it waiting for it to get light enough to spin. There had been only the tiniest of crescent moons but lots of beautiful stars and I have to say very very (brrrrrrrr) cold. I'm just going to whisper here and say that, yes, the trout were indeed very elusive, shhhh.

By Saturday morning I really really felt like a rest day with time to read my book as well as do a big laundry wash so we moved further north of town to the Old Seadown School, an NZMCA CAP, lovely, large parklike grounds in front of the owners house and tennis court being fringed at one end with glorious fruit trees. A very friendly owner and a very peaceful spot with a toilet, shower, $2, and washing machine, $3, and a donation for staying.

A nice flat, quiet rural setting. 

There are a couple of semi- permanents staying here and just 3 casuals like us last night. It was great to get a load and a half of washing out on the line and read the last half of my book whilst sitting outside in the lovely sunshine. And a good sleep last night as even though there is a road each side of the property, behind the trees, it was quiet.