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South Island


Good morning! I've moved even further into the future and am now in Christchurch, New Zealand where ... I'm very impressed with the service here now. When I booked a room at the nearby motel, I got an e-m... Either motels have got a lot plusher in the last couple of years, or they've always been like that d... ... but look at this! It's also got free WiFi, which I wasn't expecting, and I've been allowed to st... Somebody has pimped their ride. This is all I will be seeing of Christchurch for the moment but I should be back in a couple of week... People weeding a roundabout. Two horses. A quiet rural road. An unusual mailbox. A babbling stream next to the road. This is what signs on minor roads look like. A small church. I spent 27 km on these gravel roads and, annoyingly, got a pucture in the last hundred metres or so ... It seems that within each field, one one cow makes up its mind whether it should run towards me or a... A pretty mailbox. I don't know the purpose of the hole which forms the bridge arch in the picture. In Australia, everybody was very keen to conserve water. There isn't the same need over here. Sheep. Here come the mountains, and the cloud which will partially hide them. Farmers here seem to separate young animals from the adults as soon as they are able to feed themsel... I don't know why there are so many rocks lying around in the field in the foreground. Scenery. I stood here having a rest on the way up a hill and wished I had brought my sound recorder. There is... Deer. This little deer was all on its own in quite a large field. It was standing very still. There were a... Exotic plants destroying the Scottish feel of the place. This duck seems to have had an accident with one of the roadside markers. Strangely, the marker has ... This looks like a possum. I don't think it was killed on the road. It looks more like it fell out of... A broad river valley. The river looks a similar colour to some that I saw in Iceland. I wonder if it's glacial meltwater. ... A short way upstream, the valley is much narrower. Gorse and the blue river. A similar view. Snowy mountains just visible between the clouds. I don't know what Mount Hutt Station is. It's certainly not a railway station. I don't think there a... The blue sign sandwiched between the two yellow ones isn't very helpful. There are big hedges like this everywhere. I think they're used as windbreaks. They seem to be doing... This road was completely straight and slightly downhill for about 7 km. Methven. I will be staying in this town tonight, but not on this main street. A modern church and an absurdly wide road. I've been on this trip for a week now and so far my bike has only had to spend one night outside. The lounge area in my lodgings for tonight, where I've ended up with an en-suite room with three sin... If I get bored later, I could always have a go at the jigsaw. Last night's hotel also had clocks like these. I don't know why. In both places, they've been wrong. This supermarket was advertised on an information board about 16 km away and the woman running the g... Two of Methven's restaurants: The Brown Pub and The Blue Pub. What's a domain? Inside The Blue Pub.... Another river. I've just come from Methven but my route was only 32 km. It was a good flat road. There was certainl... An irrigator under construction. Almost all lorries here, whether they're flatbeds, solid-sided, tankers or logging trucks, are compr... This looks like a reservior or tank of some kind under construction. There are the first other cyclists I've seen. They're Colombian and are following a route pretty sim... I've had the radio on this morning and there has been a lot of stuff on it about today being the 50t... Scenery. Tourists. The one on the right was just crouching down photographing the road in close-up detail. More scenery. I think that while I was photographing this, the tourists from the previous picture we... A detail of the previous scene. Oh, now I'm photographing the road. These little tabs mark where the white lines are. The last third of today's ride, after Geraldine, is a lot hillier than the earlier part. More scenery, with what look like beehives on the left. Cows. Lumpy ground. A postal vehicle. I was told once that in Australia, house numbers go up by one for every 10 metres. It looks like the... These cows were running down the hill in a long line. I keep expecting to see those Colombians somewhere behind me. Either they're not as fit as they look... More hills. An observation point at the top of the last hill. That might be Fairlie. I don't know what's zig-zagging up the hill at the left edge of this picture.... Having observed a few more signs, I conclude that this is what a domain is. A ski-related shop. The Old Library Cafe, now nore like the Old Cafe Wreck. I don't know what this is. The door on the left is labelled "WAITING ROOM". The door on th... The war memorial in Fairlie. I'm frequently having to think about what should be the same down here ... My motel room. I'm beginning to regret getting that minibus to take me from the airport to the motel... Hooray for point 2. I've read dozens of sets of instructions like these in my time and this is the f... The $2 coin has an unusual edge.... Snowy mountains visible from Fairlie. Twizel is where I will be going today. I believe pies are popular in New Zealand. I just got this one from the supermarket and it's still v... I've only come 2 km today and already I've got a flat tyre. This piece of metal was the culprit. So there are. Gorse. Bees! A lotalotalot of bees! none of them came near me though. An antique and coffee shop where I stopped for a lolly. Part of the same place. Hey, it's the Colombians. They looked at the antique place and decided to keep going. They stopped here though. This monument is about Michael Burke's discovery of this pass.... Lupins. The top of Burke's Pass, although not the highest point of today's ride. I see we've moved up to banana alert. Tourists. More tourists. More lupins! A view. There are mountains in this picture too. Lake Tekapo is an amazing colour. Lake Tekapo. Lake Tekapo. A few more tourists. This photoshoot went on for a long time with not much happening. The Colombians again, now with a tripod. Them again. And again. Interestingly shaped clouds. The town of Lake Tekapo. The amazing blue water from Lake Tekapo flows 26 km through this canal and then down into a hydroele... The canal. A bus to a nearby Earth and Sky Observatory. One of the regions which I passed through earlier was d... Lake Tekapo. Lake Tekapo. Mountains and clouds. I don't really understand. Does this mean that the bullocks still operate? Scenery. The canal. I had been planning to ride along the road alongside it, which is owned by the power stat... The blue canal. Ever since I fixed that puncture this morning, the tyre has been slowly losing air and I've had to p... Scenery. Lake Pukaki. Lake Pukaki. Some more tourists. This is what they're looking at. I think this is Mount Cook, also known as Aoraki. The water from the canal goes down through those pipes to the power station. On leaving Lake Pukaki, the water goes along another canal to another power station somewhere. Here they like their lupins pink. Twizel, my destination for today, calls itseld "Town of Trees... This place was offering biplane flights over Mount Cook. The flag said that you could fly now and th... There's another turbine blade but nothing explains why the other things are there. The only informat... You wouldn't have had this in Australia. I forgot to write down the name of the motel where I would be staying tonight so I just came to the ... Like in Lake Tekapo, the fire station here is also the St. John Ambluance station. I arrived here just in time to get an order in for breakfast tomorrow. I was surprised to be given i... It doesn't belong here in the narrative, but this is the picture of the farm shop where I stopped in... I was thinking all day that what I would really like is a bath to soothe my aching legs. I've just f... I can't really see the Milky Way yet but the stars are quite impressive from this small town. On the... Immersing my rear inner tube in water has just revealed three further punctures. I've fixed them and... The police station is separate from the fire and ambulance stations. Twizel town centre. According to the man at the motel, this place sells bike tyres but it's not open on Sundays. He said... I didn't know whether the Colombians has stopped yesterday in Lake Tekapo or continued to here. Here... There is a river which flows from lake to lake as it goes from the mountains down to the sea but sin... A duck on Lake Ruataniwha. Lake Ruataniwha. Landscape with bike. I think this is the last I will be seeing of the canals. Salmon fishing. A lorry and trailer. This one carries milk. This field of cows had a remarkable number of water sprinklers. More mountains and lupins. A bee. Omarama airfield. Rocks on the horizon. My motel for tonight is the building just above my bike but I woun't be able to check in for an hour... This looks like a rather antique bike rack. I can't see anything which specifies when the sheep shearing takes place but there doesn't seem to b... Omarama is a popular place for gliding. What are they doing with my bike? I think this is an Australasian robin. There was a row of four Easter Island heads in a residential street opposite the Wrinkly rams. It's as if there is somehow too much water in the distribution system and people are being encourage... This motel reception is unusual. I saw the Hot Tubs advertised on my way into the town. Apparently you can sit in a tub of heated lak... This mailbox is made from an engine camshaft. Omarama seems rather sheep-focused. There's not much more to Omarama than this. A dog waiting patiently in a truck outside the restaurant. The fire station, an antique shop and the police station. The literature in my room described Omaram... I could have gone for a takeaway through there... ... but instead, I ate in the Merino Baa. Evening sunlight on the mountains. The strange thing is that there has been a noise like rain battering against my motel room going on ... The gradual climb towards the Lindis Pass. Approaching the Lindis Pass. All the sheep I would see today would be merinos. They're funny looking things. I've had yet another puncture, this time caused by this piece of glass. I'm not very happy with thes... The last 2 km towards the summit are the steepest. Looking back down from near the summit. The monument at the top of the pass commemorates the introduction of wild deer to this area. Just in case you didn't know what a lupin looks like. There's no chain guard on this bike so it's made a bit of a mess of my trouser leg. Scenery. I passed at least two of these hoppers today. I don't know what they're for. Scenery. Scenery. I think that's a little stream winding around that rock. Scenery. The sign shows that this is the seventh tee of a golf course so I don't know why it has two benches,... The only town along today's route between Omarama and Wanaka is Tarras. This is pretty much it, apar... I don't think I've ever had New Zealand wine. This is the Swallows Crossing vineyard, established in... The yellow sign marks a district boundary. Scenery. Scenery. This farmer has found an easy way to herd cows. He drives and they all follow. I didn't realise when I took the picture that I was about to cross that bridge. A bend in the Clutha River. An interesting irrigation arrangement. It looks like the irrigator can at times complete a full circ... It seems that the first sign you get of any town in New Zealand is the airfield. Here at Wanaka, you... Alternatively, you could do this. The first of many rosebushes I would see in Wanaka. they all look a bit ... One of two transport museums at the airfield. I wonder if the Colombians will stop at this one. Inde... A strange lumpy hill. Scenery with clouds. I don't think I'll be parking there. Republicans, eh? Wanaka. I think that just driving the car looks quite fun. What's that big stick coming out of the dashboard... Rabbit! The entrance to Puzzling World. Inside Puzzling Wolrld. This Tower of Hanoi might take a while. This area, which is also the cafe, has puzzles at every table. A hologram. The tilted rooms. This hall of concave faces is impressive. They all seem to follow you as you move. Visitors puzzling. The Ames room. Puzzling World. This is the real reason why I came here: the Einstein illusion knit, designed and created by my moth... ... but from in front you just see this. I should have taken a close-up picture to show how it works... More of those roses around the maze. The object of the maze is to find all our corner towers. These visitors have found one. It's a big maze. This is just part of it. This is another part. I had glimpsed the sign about the diorama in the toilets from the maze so I knew what to expect but ... People behave strangely here. Just a wooded hill. I think I will have to go over that tomorrow. Isn't that a 264 hour liquor ban? Wanaka. The flag. Wanaka. Not many restaurants open on a Monday night. Even where they do, people seem to prefer to stand outs... There are plenty of places to buy alcohol though, despite the part-time ban. It's starting to look like there is no professional fire brigade in New Zealand. In picture 436, I wondered whath the Plunket Rooms were. Here in Wanaka, it's more obvious that &quo... My bike locked up next to some roses. My room at this hotel looks a little bit dated... ... but it's the first I've had in Australia or New Zealand where the shower head is actually high e... The room also has a patio door which opens straight into this garden. The customers and staff in the Mexican restaurant, like everybody else, were very friendly. I opened my hotel room door this morning just in time to see a cat dash past. Then it stopped and wa... Wanaka. I saw several people on bikes in Wanaka, and several bike racks. I didn't expect that because it's a... A mountain and clouds. Why so many sprinklers? The Cardrona river. Variegated lupins. The Cardrona River. This is where the ascent of the Crown Range gets very steep. The texture of the rocky soil. Still climbing. The summit! This is the highest paved road in New Zealand. From here, you can see Queenstown. This will be, or possibly has been, a welcome sight for those Col... The Crown Range Summit. Smile! Another cyclist. He didn't stop for long though. I saw several racing cyclists haring down the pass ... That will be me in a few minutes. Queenstown Bike Taxis take mountain bikers to the tops of their downhill trails, as well as other pl... A different observation point. Queenstown, preceeded by its airport, as I have come to expect. I feel the need to hold onto something when looking at a view like this. A view. A view. I will be going down all those hairpins soon. She walked over to that tree, contemplated it for a while and then came back. A view. More tourists. Arrowtown. A plane on its way into Queenstown. These markers ran along the road for a few kilometres. Frankton. Not the most picturesque place to stop for refreshments but there's a shop right behind the camera a... As I was passing the airport, five helicopters arrived. Here are two of them. These mountains are called the Remarkables. A pair of tandem skydivers. This racing cyclist rode past while I was taking pictures of the skydivers. I would later see her co... Another pair. The road along the edge of Lake Wakatipu is tiring. Instead of following the shoreline, it keeps cli... Lake Wakatipu. Rugged. The Wye Creek. A gentler waterfall. Tourists. Lake Wakatipu. I can now see Kingston, my destination for today, in the distance. Clouds hugging the mountains. Kingston. I was surprised when I came to the address specified for tonight's accommodation and found just a ga... Margaret and Peter Gibson take the title so far for friendliest people in New Zealand. They gave me ... Margaret said she put her Christmas tree up today. I have now got used to the fact that it's summer ... To help me get to the cafe in time, they pointed out a route through this sheep field. Sheep. My trouser leg has got worse. I'm now thinking of cutting the bottom part off. Inside the cafe. I made good use of the water dispenser there next to the cash machine. They watched the weather forecast intently. I was pleased to see that this afternoon's headwind isn'... You pay for petrol at the machine with the arrow pointing to it. That has nothing to do with either ... Sheep, and more of those mountain-hugging clouds. The glass of beer is the one which I didn't have time to finish before going to the cafe. The rest o... The flat has a view over the roof of the house. There's also a selection of puzzles, magazines, DVDs and one Reader's Digest book. Wakatipu sunset. Peter insisted on taking a picture of me. Today is warming up already. Crop sparying. This is Fairlight Station, one of two stations on the Kingston Flyer steam line. I never saw the tra... Garston. Garston. Garston. Hello. Scenery. "IN MEMORY OF... Birds following a plough. The red thing in the foreground is a cartographical reference point. Nosey cows. Some kind of pea. I'm not sure if the trees in the middle are burned or just bare. Although today's ride is generally heading down to the sea, there are some big hills to cross. Hills. Lumsden. Motorbikers are beginning to converge on Invercargill for this weekend's Burt Munro festival, commem... They might not be quite legible here but I like how the signs to the Medical Centre and to Gore poin... These are strange sweets. At first I thought I was going to be able to make a chain out of them but ... A mirage. There were lots of lorries and trailers full of logs heading South. This is how whey look going the ... I wonder if one of those is the one I was accused of stealing. Turbines. Landscape with sheep. More bikers. Scenery. This is the second time I've had to stop to repair punctures today. On the first occasion, I actuall... I think that part of the problem is that the shoulder where I've been riding, at the bottom of this ... A woodworking workshop in a garage in a village called Centre Bush. The high hedges of the first day are making a comeback. This one uses some exotic trees. How about a cemetery? I don't think we've had one yet this year. This one has a rather open-plan fee... Strange place for a rest area. Winton. These are the New Zealand version of Belisha beacons. This farm track gets its own underpass. Hedges. One of these doesn't belong here. Although the shoulders are often narrow, rough and stoney, they sometimes seem to overcompensate by ... I think these are the first traffic lights I've seen in New Zealand. I hope to see some real ones over the next few days. This is the kind of arterial road which often had lots of car showrooms but this one also has showro... I've seen a lot of personalised registrations while I've been here but some are hard to understand. Invercargill was certainly involved in the war. Invercargill. Invercargill's water tower. The Gibsons were telling me over breakfast that the World's Fastest Indian, which is a motorbike, is... How unseasonal. Invercargill. I think this just means that nothing in there costs less than $2.... Invercargill. The building in the background is the old Post Office, now a set of serviced apartment... Motorbikes. Invercargill's population is only 59000 but it has the feel of a much larger city. It's got a 24-hou... Invercargill. Invercargill. Invercargill, featuring an elephant. My bike nearly matches the colour of the rack. Wow! I've got another huge room. All this is part of it. The bedrooms don't look quite so plush but they have everything I would expect and there are two of ... A few of my earlier New Zealand hotels advertised free WiFi but only actually let you use 100 MB, wh... In these two bedrooms, I can dry my clothes in a place where they get a breeze and direct sunlight. ... Who are these other computers who have appeared? Here's a piece of luck. It turns out that there is a bike shop right next door to my hotel. The prob... Why didn't they put the plaque there then? Three chains is about 60 metres. the place where I have come for dinner this evening happens to be having a quiz night. I think I'm t... Christmas decorations in a deserted city centre late at night, in the daylight. Invercargill, 9:52 pm, although the two faces of that clock show different times. This is my old rear tyre. Look how floppy it is! Tyres shouldn't be like this. Also, see how much re... I bought a new, bigger, thicker, stiffer tyre which claims to be "flatless". Unfortunately... Apparently, this is the town hall and the theatre. I never saw the rest of this building. A mural. Invercargill. This shade of orange seems to be becoming a universal standard for big DIY stores. It's a shame it h... Invercargill used to have the most southerly railway station in the world, until passenger services ... This farmer obviously doesn't have a helicopter. The Mataura River. Looking the other way. Scenery. A river which is popular with anglers. The sea! These little hills are exhausting. Hilly ground. The road surface here is melting. The track on the left was made by a tractor's trailer which just c... The hills never end. Lush scenery. Niagara Falls. Apparently, it was named as a joke. Niagara Falls. There will be no food where I'm going tonight so I've come for an early dinner in this place, which ... It also doesn't really explain why these are sitting on the counter. I, and the two customers who came in after me, found that this room was too hot to sit in. I wonder how far I could persuade them to take me. This concrete horse trough, from about 1890, is signed from the road for being of historical interes... A river estuary. I don't know if this is normal but this cemetery has a directory listing. Scenery. Wood which has been turned to stone by being buried for millions of years. Kind of like coal except ... Waikawa. The fire station. An interesting cloud formation. The people who own tonight's accommodation are farmers so they aren't around in the daytime. They ju... A sign said that I should remove my shoes before entering the cabin. when I did, I found quite a lot... My accommodation for tonight. It's very light in here because the walls which you can't see are almo... The view from the bed. Apparently, dolphons can often be seen playing in the surf and it's not that ... Almost everybody who stays here writes in the visitor book about how wonderful it is. They say it's ... Trees. The short walk from my accommodation to Curio Bay. As far as I can tell, this is currently the most southerly point on Google Street View. The petrified forest at Curio Bay. A lot of the lumps of rock used to be trees. This bay is famous for yellow-eyed penguins, also known as hoiho, possibly the world's rarest specie... Waiting for the penguins. The pertified forest. The pertified forest. I think a penguin has been sighted. Hello up there! At high tide, this whole area must be underwater. Penguins! Please excuse me. There might be one or two pictures of penguins coming up now. Penguin. A penguin splashing in a puddle. Penguin. Penguin. Penguin. Penguin. A penguin just emerging from the sea. Penguin watchers. Penguin. Work it, baby. Here's a good example of a petrified stump. Penguin. Penguin. Penguin. Probably looking for penguins. Penguin. This penguin has nearly reached the bushes. They make slow progress across the land and spend a lot ... Surf. Penguin. A preening penguin. I'm not sure who is behaving more strangely. This bird should consider itself watched. Penguin. Penguin and tourist. Penguin. Penguin. Penguin. Penguin. Penguin. It's hard to tell because they all look similar but it looked as if this might have been the parent ... Had a good day at the office? At its left end, the petrified log in the foreground looks quite like wood. It feels like stone thou... Hoiho! I'm a penguin don't you know? What? Penguin. More of those trees. I saw this van a few days ago. I can't remember where but I remember wondering if it was owned by re... These aren't the kind of trees that I would expect to find near penguins. My cabin. Somebody walking on the beach outside my cabin. I was indeed woken well before dawn by the penguins ... Today looks like being a bit damp. Near my cabin. Surfers. Climbing into the clouds. Foliage. Some of the things that grow here. The road up near the clouds. I had always assumed that most of the strange Australian animals were also native to New Zealand. In... Tautuku Bay. It's me! Trees. Some kind of eucalyptus, I think. What is this? Some kind of Japanese picnic area? The walkway to Matai Falls and the Horseshoe falls looked inviting but I can't go on a 30 minute wal... Rock strata. The Catlins, the region which I am passing through today, has many parallel ridges of h... A view. Unusual gatepost. Owaka. The fire station, on the right, is the same colour scheme as the one which I saw yesterday. Some kind of railway contraption rusting in Owaka. The toilets are very clearly signposted in every village. There were a lot of empty shops in Owaka's main street. This is the view inside one of them. Despite what the two signs on the left might suggest, this cafe is closed. Looks more like a hair saloon. This cafe is open, and provides an unusual service. Stopping for a full meal during my ride worked well yesterday so I've done the same today.... Teapotland? Where are they off to? The last of today's serious hills. It looked quite pretty, even if they are utterly exhausting. I think it's an ostrich. A view from the top of the hill. These sheep have just been let out of a barn. A twisty road. Kaka Point. Surf's up! The pricing scheme at tonight's motel seems a little vague. I've travelled 900 km since leaving Christchurch without using any powered transport of any kind at ... These penguins cross a sandy beach, then a few rocks, then some grass and then they're into the bush... Unlike at Curio Bay, this is as close as you're not allowed to get any closer to the beach here, to ... A one-year old penguin. A penguin. Rocks. Shaped by the wind, the trees have formed natural cover over part of the path. A seal lying on the rocks. Nugget Point lighthouse. Nugget Point. These are the nuggets. It looks a bit like an armadillo. This is an important moment for me. This is almost certainly the furthest away I will ever get from ... Sunset. Shadows of the clouds. In the setting sun, the nuggets are taking on the golden colour which gave them their name. In this view from my motel, Nugget Point lighthouse is the bright dot above the horizon. Today I intend to go to Dunedin. I haven't booked any accommodation beyond there and I'm thinking of... Kaka Point beach. Another nearby beach. Vintage cars in Balclutha. Here's one. And some more. This picture wasn't really meant to be here. Well-kept gardens. Balclutha. It's that van again! I keep seeing it. As well as the very old cars, Balclutha had several of this kind of age trundling around its streets... Balclutha. A remarkably ornate pedestrian crossing. Balclutha. Do you remember the Clutha River from near Wanaka? Here it is again. Balclutha bridge. This is Milton. I see that unlike in Invercargill, the Night 'n Day shop here does close briefly dur... An antique shop. Because I was making such good time, I've just stopped for lunch at the Subway rest... I thought my choice for today was between either staying on the main road, which has been fine so fa... This isn't it. Apparently, he made a brief uncontrolled flight about nine months before the Wright brothers. I'm impressed that anyone can plough a field that shape. This is the road which was marked on my map. The map was obviously lying though because having reach... I made it about 2 km on the gravel, enough to get down the other side of the hill and past a sign sa... In fixing the puncture, I somehow reset the counter on my trip computer, which doesn't really matter... I don't know why there is a war merorial at the top of this hill which just leads to the gravel road... After going up and down the big hill again, and battling against that incredible wind for about 10 k... It worried me a little that just afer I had settled into my room, something which sounded like an ai... Milton. Lake Waihola. Strange place to want to sit. Lake Waihola with the railway line, which still carries freight but not passengers. A small beach. Funny place for a slide too. Waihola. The railway. A motorcyclist looking at the map. Vehicles in Waihola. Part way up today's big climb. Trees. I was happy this morning to find that the tailwind is just as strong as it was yesterday, and today ... Looking down on Waihola. Here's how to make a cheap picnic table. View. View. Today's ride is the second half of what I was trying to do yesterday. I'm glad I ended up breaking i... Taieri Mouth. Taieri Mouth. Choppy. She's been falling off a lot but she seems to have got the hang of it now. These benches have footrests! For the whole time I was sitting here, a contiuous procession of funny little mopeds was coming acro... They are something to do with the moped event. The sign says "VCC CHECK". More of these exotic plants. The red things are flax. Sea spray. Plants. Waves. A man and a dog. Geese on a pond. The river in Brighton. The river will get a surprise when it encounters those waves. A bus shelter. One of those electric barbecues. A woman and her shopping. Green Island, the island which could be seen in the distance in picture 920. They've removed a lot of that headland. I found out later that at least one cruise ship had been unable to dock in Dunedin today because of ... I'm pleased by the way this tree has grown because it suggests that the prevailing wind along this c... Today's last serious hill. A cyclist. Suburban Dunedin. All the bus shelters I've seen today have been painted colourfully. Prior to today, I hadn't seen an... Here's another odd vehicle. I think the owners are setting their sights a bit high by wanting to sel... Dunedin. Dunedin. Cricket in Dunedin. Cricket spectators. Dunedin. What I read before coming on this trip implied that Christchurch was the only city in New Zealand wi... Perhaps the Trade Paint Centre should have painted an "I" onto that drainpipe. Dunedin. Dunedin. Dunedin. If I had reached Dunedin yesterday as planned, my day off would have been today, Sunday. I thought t... Dunedin. Dunedin. The brick building is the Speight's brewery. That's a brand of beer I've see everywhere in New Zeala... A mash tun. A drinking fountain in the wall of the brewery. Dunedin. Dunedin Cathedral, next to my hotel. Another building next to the Cathedral. This cat welcomed me to the hotel car park by meowing, then rolled around in the gravel. I'm in my hotel, which apparently used to be a teaching house for the Christian Brothers. Because Du... The view from the lower balcony. When I was booking the hotel this morning, I thought it was strange that they had chosen something v... Other guests in the lounge. They didn't know where the owner was. Being nosey, I opened this creaky door and found a fridge. I would later be told that this was origi... I still haven't been able to check in. This is the reception but there's nobody here. I'm in my room at last. It's a bit smaller than some previous ones but there's nothing wrong with th... Dunedin. The streets are very quiet. And what's in those car parks? Night 'n Day is that supermarket chain. I don't know why they have a support centre in what looks li... Dunedin. Dunedin. The central square in Dunedin is actually an octagon called the Octagon. It has lots of other octago... The statue is of Robbie Burns, the Scottish poet. Octagons. Dunedin. A music shop. This is a big sports shop. Two of its downstairs windows display bikes and the other two display sur... The offices of the Otago Daily Times. External fire escapes seem to be a feature of Dunedin. Ping On? An old locomotive on display at Dunedin station. I think that all the station is used for now is these tourist trains. Dunedin station. It's an impressive building. Tidy flowerbeds. Something I just read claimed that the station is one of the most photographed buidings in the world... People seem to finish dining in the evenings earlier in New Zealand than in other places. Combined w... Dunedin. Dunedin. The door to this room full of rugs was open. It didn't look like there was anybody inside but I did ... Strange shapes. My belongings look quite tidy when stacked up like that. Dunedin harbour. Today, I'll be having a day off from cycling and going on a wildlife-watching trip in this boat. Dunedin is rather cut off from its waterfront by the railway line which runs along that fence. He's got a lot of luggage. The woman following him had just as much. Dunedin harbour. The woman standing up is clearly a keen birdwatcher and is trying to identify whether that is the bo... Workers at a cold storage warehouse. Dunedin Stadium is unusual in that it is fully enclosed but still has real grass. I came down one of those roads yesterday. Passing the fertiliser production facility. The green line through the water is the top of a wall which was constructed to constrain most of the... The boat's driver was giving an informative commentary, as well as keeping a lookout for birds. View from the boat. Logs on a lorry. Mount Cargill. Larnachs Castle, the only castle in New Zealand. The narrow point in the channel out of Dunedin. Shags on a navigation marker. Otago University's marine laboratory, with a sign protesting about the proposed deep sea drilling. Port Chalmers. This is where those logs were going. Port Chalmers. Containers. Port Chalmers. They kept up with the boat for a while. I don't know whether I will be using this road tomorrow. Something has gone weird with my GPS logger. I might be crossing those hills tomorrow. The thing on the hill is a navigation aid. It's a light which appears different colours depending on... That's a lot of pink. Harington Point, the destination for our wildlife-watching trip. Shags. There's an albatross in the grass at the bottom. Cliffs. Birds nesting in the cliffs. A seal. Hello. A seal coming out of the water. Two seals. Three seals. A little seal. Seals. A seal in the water. There is a seal in the bottom right. Albatross! Albatross. An albatross flying. And another seal. Our driver poses with two passengers, one of whom used to drive this boat years ago and the other of... Old military fortifications. A view of Dunedin from the minibus ride back. Back at Dunedin station. Apparently, Dunedin is known as the Edinburgh of the South, which is odd because Edinburgh is the At... Strange chairs inside the Otago Settlers Museum. This museum is about the people who migrated to this part of New Zealand between about 1820 and 1870... Dunedin in the 1850s. There are bikes in the museum. Dunedin used to have trams which operated by gripping onto cables which were constantly being pulled... The museum's contents extend closer to the present day than I had expected. Here are some of the old... With no real explanation, a surprisingly large part of the museum is given over to this recreation o... Somebody trying out a penny farthing. The original ELSIE, New Zealand's equivalent of ERNIE. The entrance to the Chinese Garden. This whole garden, weighing over 1000 tonnes, was constructed in Shanghai and then taken apart and b... Let's see what's happening today through the round window. Visitors can adopt a fish, name it and release it into the pond. I don't know where the fish come fr... You can't stop those Germans though. The Chinese Garden. I don't remember Edinburgh having this many fire escapes. Dunedin has some pretty steep streets. Now I know what a car and dog wash is. I've just bought a new front tyre to match the back one. Now I get to look at this unidentifiable br... Cables in the street. A strange structure. The owners of the bikes on the right have been very economical with their use of the racks. There was nobody up there. The rack on the front of the yellow bus is for carrying bikes. All the buses have them. The tour gui... People. Back at the Octagon. A tourist. People enjoying the sunshine. Phone boxes and post boxes. The Octagon. What's a jaggery glaze? The trams used to run up the road which goes from left to right in this picture. It took me a while to find the drinking glasses in this hotel room. My old trainers were coming apart by their second day in New Zealand. Re-stitching them did a good j... What's manchester? Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world. A duckling, just to show that it's spring here. I saw a few on my approach to Kaka Point but their m... Here, the road splits in two but there's a handy little sign on the left showing which is the recomm... An adventure tour company doing something with bikes. They must have big birds in that field. A view from the road. The cloud is doing a good editing job here by leaving Mount Cargill visible bu... A view of Dunedin. A view of Dunedin. A view of central Dunedin. Another cyclist. A few minutes ago, one came down the hill, stopped just short of where I was, turne... A type of flower which I haven't seen before, and a car the same colour as my bike. That's where I took the boat trip yesterday. I don't know what that means. Horses. There's nothing on the information board. Perhaps it used to describe what could be seen from here b... Another helpful sign. A newly-refurbished wooden bridge. In some places, they put tarmac over the wood but you can still f... A railway bridge. What are these? A tidy gargen. There goes one of the tourist trains which I saw at Dunedin station. It's surprisingly long. There are observation platforms at the ends of each carriage. Seacliff. Seacliff. The raiway winding its way round the coast. This road is called the coast road so I rather hoped that it would follow the coast at sea level. No... The two on the left are German tourists. The two on the right are New Zealanders just visiting place... The beaches of Karitane and Waikouaiti. Karitane. The Germans said they would be looking for somewhere to stop for a picnic. They seem to have chosen ... I'm losing confidence in this map. Apart from it marking some tarmac roads as gravel and some gravel... While I was eating a bag of sweets here, a man drove up, did the quickest bit of fishing I've ever s... No cycling trip would be complete without a figure made from bales of hay. I like the little gap between the top of the hill and the bottom of the trees. Just a typical lorry. Sheep on what I think used to be the main road. The cairn honouring Sir John McKenzie, Minister of Lands from 1891 to 1900, sitting on top of the ex... The trees in this street look quite like what I would expect back home. Palmerston, with a preserved waterwheel and wagon and a rather ugly clock dating from 1982. The Appl... The ice creams are popular here. Palmerston, with another ugly clock which doesn't even work, and a cafe in the old station, where I ... Palmerston. I often see the same car several times in one day, sometimes over multiple days. I saw this one abou... "Hi, Zealandia"... The tourist information office. I didn't go in there but I did read the information boards out here.... Palmerston. No, they aren't. The second-hand bookshop on the left only deals in books from New Zealand. This motel has a dog and a cat. The dog seems to particularly like lying here. For at least the third time on this trip, I've just done a load of washing in a proper washing machi... The town of Palmerston doesn't extend very far in that direction. The police station. Inside the Station Cafe. I like these polished tree sections used as tables by the windows. These are filled with prawns. While I was eating, a woman turned up for a drink on a horse. The doors are bolted but you could almost walk through the gap between them. Ducks. It's another sunny day. Hills. Lambs. A minimalist power pylon. Looking back towards Palmerston. Junk in a field. Plants. I stopped here for a while listening to the amazing bird sounds coming from these trees. I don't hav... The welcome view through the cutting at the summit of the Horse Range. A rugged landscape. Rocks. Scenery. A farm on a hill. Scenery. Moeraki beach. Tourists on Moeraki beach. Limestone pavement partially buried in the sand. People. One of the Moeraki boulders. Each of these boulders started with a small pebble which became buried ... Boulders. A boulder. Fine dark sand. Boulders. Boulders. The back of a boulder. This one has broken. This one is encrusted with barnacles. Boulders. Boulders. The bike on Moeraki beach. This bus is towing the van. The writing painted on the window says "Hey We are Moveing across the Road soon!". It seem... The community centre in Hampden. Escape is a company which hires out vans like this. I've seen quite a few of them. Each one has diff... I had been planning to go this way but it doesn't really matter. The main road is fine. I'm glad the... The landscape it returning to how it was for my first day in New Zealand. A monument at the Totara estate, which pioneered the export of frozen meat. There is some strange stuff abandoned at the roadside just here, such as this implement... ... and this poor cow. Steampunk capital of New Zealand, apparently. I don't think I've seen any temporary traffic lights in New Zealand. If a lane is closed, there are ... Is this trying to imply some kind of Roman connection with Oamaru? I don't believe it. On previous trips, I would consider 110 km to be quite a short day. I've just taken two days to come... Oamaru. Oamaru. Here's the "ALPS2OCEAN" cycle trail. I saw it in the mountains around Omarama. Now here it... This part of Oamaru is quite cluttered. I don't know what kind of animal this is meant to be, or why it has missiles on its back. Chariots. Oamaru. Oamaru. I'm glad I don't need to know anything about airlines. The oven here has two electrical outlets built into it. In this fairly basic motel room, the staff seem to have put a disproportionate amount of effort into... This town has plenty of cycling facilities, including cycle lanes on all the main roads, a bike shop... I bought a NZ Telecom SIM card for my phone in Dunedin. It worked well there but has had no signal s... An old car being renovated. I've seen a lot of this kind of thing going on in side streets in New Zealand. "XHX" is obviously such an unusual number plate that the driver himself has got out to tak... The old station. A cadillac. Oh, the station again. That wasn't supposed to happen. Freight trains still use the tracks but the station is no longer active. A boat at sea. Oamaru. Who could be dominated by a garage door? Rusty things. Here's the steampunk HQ. The old part of Oamaru. Now I'm just taking pictures through windows. According to a sign, somebody here is making lamps to ... The appearance of this building didn't really match with the sounds, which made it pretty apparent t... Oamaru. A group of volunteers have recreated this historic bridge over the railway line. I can't imagain tha... Strange. A tree being carved. Oamaru seems proud of its rust. This modern playground, on the site of a playground from 1922, features a lot of rusty railway stuff... Oamaru harbour. This wharf was built in 1884 for exporting frozen meat from the Totara estate to Britain. These days... These are blue penguins, the kind which woke me up in the night when I was at Curio Bay. Another view of the penguins. This is the smallest breed of penguin, only about 30 cm high. They scr... In this colony, the penguins dig their own burrows but then the keepers replace part of it with a bo... Oamaru harbour by night. Although Oamaru is a large town, I walked right through the centre and out along one of the main roa... ... and leads to a museum of radios and inside that... ... is this small studio from where Oamaru Heritage Radio is broadcasting early 20th century music a... A train came through here just a few moments ago. I've yet to see whether the lights flash at level ... It seems that the Corinthian column at the entrance to the town represents the ones on the old court... Oamaru by night. I think this is washing up liquid but it could be mustard. We'll soon find out. There seem to be more recycling facilities in Oamaru than anywhere else I've visited on this trip. T... Oamaru has quite a professional-looking fire station. It's still a volunteer service though. This stone marks where the road crosses the line 45 degrees South although as the signpost shows, be... Today I will be on highway 1 for the whole day. The hills have pretty much disappeared now, the weat... Remember all that amazingly coloured water in Lakes Tekapo and Pukaki, and the canals which link the... Don't laugh. That's probably how I stand whenever I want to stretch out and admire the view. This little duckling was being swept away by the fast-moving water. I hope it manages to get back al... When I got there, it looked like an ordinary cafe so I didn't bother going in and trying to ask for ... That's an intriguing slogan. By the roadside. The start of a long queue of cows. A hotel in St. Andrews. I don't know why this flax isn't the same colour as the red stuff I've been seeing. Perhaps it's a d... Timaru Botanic Gardens, featuing another statue of Robbie Burns. After spending time in the South, where Queenstown and Invercargill are the only large towns, it now... Timaru. Timaru station is more modern than some others, but still doesn't have any trains. The far end is a ... Timaru. Timaru. The waterfront area in Timaru. Timaru. A tiny oak seedling growing under the parent tree. Logging trucks in Geraldine. They looks like they used to be two churches next to each other. Cyclists. Geraldine. I was in Geraldine nearly two weeks ago. On that occasion, I headed out on this road and into the fi... When I was here before, I stopped for lunch just outside the town and then, refreshed, dashed throug... Geraldine. From right to left, there are a hairdresser, a butcher, a chip shop, a wool shop and the ... The Giant Jersey of Geraldine, inside the wool shop. We're not really making full use of the parking facilities at this motel. The window of the Anzac Commemorations Trust explains that although remembrance poppies are normall... Normally, I wouldn't be able to resist something called random chicken... ... but tonight I was swayed by the half kilo of ribs. To be fair, quite a lot of that is actually b... A strange thing to have on the outside of a bank. These are the same hills that I was seeing on my first day in New Zealand.... Distant mountains. The 44th parallel gets a bigger monument than the 45th. The landscape has gone very flat. Several kilometres of the main highway was closed because of an accident so all the traffic was re-r... I crossed another of those bright blue rivers earlier but there's normally nowhere to stop on the br... A shady spot in Ashburton. I tried to eat an ice lolly here but even under these trees, quite a lot ... I don't know why I'm still using this map. I don't believe that it's 26 km from Ashburton to Rakaia ... An electrical cable running to a socket up a tree, for no obvious reason. It's all right; it can't see me. Alpacas. Incredibly after the hills of the last two weeks, for a few hours, the road became so flat that I co... A train waiting at a red signal. Rakaia. The building on the right is the modern public toilets. To the left of that are the old jail and the... Tractors at a John Deere factory. Here's something I haven't seen for a while: a working station. I was thinking of using this back road but decided against it when I saw that it had just as much tr... Getting into Christchurch is fairly easy. This road has both a cycle lane and a lane bus. Big clock. It looks like somebody once tidied all this broken glass into that bucket but it's out again now. The path around the periphery of a park. Basketball must be popular here. I've never seen so many basketball courts in one place. This is only about a quarter of what's here. A gym class in the park. Punt houses in Christchurch. You probably can't punt very far in this direction. Christchurch. Christchurch. Christchurch. Christchurch. Christchurch. Flats with a turret. The offices of the city council. An art gallery. Christchurch. According to the maps in the street, the road which I'm walking along will come to the very centre o... The remains of Christchurch Cathedral, destroyed by the earthquake of 2011, one of a number of earth... Some of what's left of the city centre. Christchurch. Christchurch. Rubble. Christchurch. Many of the buildings which are still standing are now out of bounds. The tram lines look okay but I never saw or heard a tram so I guess that the lines are damaged elsew... The cathedral. The cathedral. The cathedral. These grassed benches are unusual. John Robert Codley, the founder the province of Canterbury. It might be better if the toilet doors closed by themselves. The two shorter buildings are abandoned. I think the larger ones behind them are still functioning. Christchurch Cathedral. This was a millennium project. It depicts depicts the gush of water that springs from the gravels be... Christchurch. Christchurch. The Theatre Royal. This is an unusual building. It has tram lines going in through both of the archways at the front. Inside. It's probably easier for people to shop in here now that there are no trams. This looks like a pretty road. It's a shame about what's next to it though. There's a lot of empty space in the view from my window. I've booked a place on a bus to Picton on Sunday morning, to connect with the ferry to the North Isl... Evening sunlight on the mountains. It appears that that car park has separate entrances for men and women. Dramatic clouds. At night, you can see that many of the buildings which are still standing are abandoned and dark. In almost every hotel on this trip, the shower head has been too low for me to fit under it upright.... Oh, trams do come in here. A tram. More earthquake damage. Sorry to keep taking pictures of number plates but some of them are ridiculous. Christchurch. The sushi restaurant is still open. Christchurch. Empty space in Christchurch. Ballantynes department store escaped the earthquakes, although I was reading last night that it was ... These businesses in the main shopping street are operating from temporary premises built out of ship... Some of the temporary structures are cafes with roof terraces upstairs. One of the banks. This is a musuem about the earthquakes. I didn't find out which building those clock faces came from... You may have noticed that John Robert Codley was missing from his plinth in the square. Here he is..... ... and here's the top of the Cathedral spire. Christchurch. Christchurch. I'll need to package my bike a bit to take it on the coach tomorrow so I'm looking for materials tha... That's a big ball. Christchurch. The numbers written on the doors were put there by the search and rescue teams after the earthquake,... Christchurch. Some of these streets are gradually turning into a Pompeii-like snapshot of what like cities were li... From across the road, I couldn't see anything which might explain what this is. The back of the cardboard cathedral. A tandem. These roads are clearly nowhere near as busy as they were designed to be. These 185 chairs represent the 185 people who died in the 2011 earthquake. 115 of those were in the ... There was a church here but it was destroyed by the earthquake which partially demolished the cathed... I like how the same type of cardboard tubes, but in different sizes, have been used for the screens,... Cardboard. This open-air even is something to do with the Phillipines. My hotel was already the tallest building in Christchurch before the earthquake, and how has conside... I think it's a bit strange that the Intercity coaches still stop at the same place as they used to i... New Regent Street, which I could see from my window. New Regent Street. A small number of cars have adopted European-style blue bands. It's unlikely that these cars will ev... You may have noticed something which looked like a crazy golf hole in the view from my window. Here'... Trams. Artwork. This is another of those projects to fill the gaps. The public are invited to try to make music by h... More artwork. The remains of a car park. Another view of the old cathedral. I don't know what this building was originally for it to have that crest above the door. More recent... This used to be the entrance to the car park of a large hotel. The clock on the roof of that building is stuck at 18:38. It's probably because of the vertical symm... Abandoned buildings. This is the Forsyth Barr building. In the museum, I watched a video of an employee describing how al... Dawn breaking in Christchurch at the absurdly early time of 16:40 yesterday afternoon. Look, I've missed the deadline for buying this building by four days. I'm a bit worried about the logistics of today. Arrcording to the coach website, all I have to do to... People waiting for the coach. I didn't realise yesterday that the little line of wobbly writing at the bottom lit up. I'm glad I'm not trying to ride on this section of road. The stones are huge and would challenge eve... We've stopped for a toilet break. Strangely, I can see into the toilets from here. View from the bus. The rocky coastline. It's not very obvious but the road goes through some rather narrow tunnels here, as does the accompa... Rocks. Kaioura. An inscription on the curved steps reads... Watch out for that giant bird. Kaioura. Kaioura. Pebbles and twigs on the beach at Kaioura. Kaioura. At the Moeraki boulders, the sandy beach was so flat that an incoming wave would continue to trundle... There's a seal on the flat rock in the foreground. It's one of many all along these few kilometres o... Scenery. According to a sign which we just passed, this is a wetland. It looks rather burnt. Scenery. A seaplane landing. This is the ferry terminal in Picton or, as my stupid map calls it, Ricton. Some hire companies don'... It turned out that I had to check my bags in as if for a plane, but keep my bike and wheel it onto t... Boats in Picton. This little dog seems to want to ride my bike. New cars, just unloaded off the ferry. A collection of boats and trailers being taken on board. Here's that little dog again. Dog owners have to walk onto the car deck like cyclists, because that'... On the ferry. The premium lounge gives you somewhere comfortable to sit and you can help yourself to free food and... Leaving Picton. A rival ferry following us. On the ferry. Nearly the first half of the ferry crossing is the journey through a labyrinth of fjords before the ... View from the ferry. View from the ferry. Waikawa. Boats. We do a tight turn around this headland. The boat leaning as it turns. There's the other boat follwing us through the maze. View from the ferry. View from the ferry. It looks like that holiday home is only accessible by boat.