More Paliser Bay and onto Masterton

Ngawi Bulldozer - Tinky Winky

Spent 2 hours exploring up the Mangatoetoe river looking for a spa pool but the rivers are so low. I always enjoy fossicking up river beds or shore lines, looking for treasures & brick a brack. Closest we got to a treasure was a sheep carcase and the meat was well past it. Damn it.
It remained cloudy up the river but was clearing to fine as we came back to the coast. Saw lots of seals which impinged on our olfactory senses. Also an elephant seal basking amongst rocks, easily 4 times the size of the fur seals, at over 2m in length.



Walked the beach the next day to a point where surfers were doing their thing on some lovely braking waves, got long rides, Daniel would love it here Rocky

The beach was littered, as would be expected during the xmas break with lots of visitors, with cray fish remnants and paua shell numbering many hundreds of fresh shells and mostly all of a legal size. Paua isn't really our dish (I can see some of you rolling your eyes) but the crays would be ok, but neither am I a diver.

We moved on to Masterton and had a short walk thru town for some fresh food and on to a reserve on the side of the Ruamahunga River, 15 kms out. A pleasant spot with elusive trout and a popular swimming hole with some of the locals. Next day went back to Masterton and quartered the town on our push bikes before again returning to our spot by the river.
We had a leisurely breakfast, reading our books, me the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, Sheryl with some sordid little novel. I can recommend my book as very thought provoking, no comment on Sheryl's bodice ripper.
Then the "its all turning to custard" bit.
Leaving our spot taking the bus over the graded berm I bottomed out leaving the rear wheels suspended over the ditch with the bus resting on its rear motor and front wheels.

Someones once loved home

Wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't been right across the access road. l panicked a bit, but was slightly relieved to see that vehicles would be able to get round me, with only a little inconvenience and some caution. It was appropriate, I feel, to let loose with the F bomb (Children! this is one of those times that this is acceptable) and rapidly went looking for a teaspoon to dig to get us out.
Holy shit batman what this, a cock up Robin....
Being 9ish, too early for a drink to calm the nerves, adrenalin was doing the business anyway, dug the tow bar out, so could get the trailer off. After several attempts at packing stones behind the wheels to back up ,to no avail, finally resorted to jacking the wheels high enough to get my blocks under, managing to get enough traction to back up. By this stage the local farmer had come by on his quad bike which I thought may be opportune if my tactic hadn't worked, so we conversed, me slightly distracted, did the intros with farmer John Booth, the Carterton Mayor no less. Well it payes to get the right sort of help, thanks for the offer of the big tractor if needed John, but dropped the bus off the jack and praise the lord (apologies to Richard Dawkins) we were able to drive back over the berm and the day was saved! Let that be a lesson to young players (and old!).
So a little more sweaty and possibly a bit smarter it was on to Carterton to inject some small measure off econmic benefit to the region.
Carterton is a small village over both sides of the highway, it started as a camp for the road makers, grew into a service town and now arguably an elite suburb for some Wellingtonians. They are able to sell up in Wellybobs, buy a nice house and car, bank some money and enjoy a restful 90min commuter ride to the capital, if indeed they are required at work & can't work from home.
We then headed of into the Gladstone area, walked through Carterton Scenic Reserve - a Doc reserve that had a walk through to another section of the Ruamahunga River, that we failed to find, only doing the loop track. Would have been a wonderful track but is sadly neglected (Doc funding cuts impacting on these smaller rural areas).
Further along the road was Gladstone Reserve where we had a refreshing dip in the river, before walking over the bridge to the Gladstone Inn which was buzzing. A lovely old hotel which was being well supported. We had a lovely pizza & drinks before returning to camp. Met Allan & Leigh from two of the other buses parked up for the night, interesting guys, particularly Leigh in his long denim skirt (his petticoat on his handlebars as he got hot riding back from the pub). These two had been in the public bar of the same pub we had just returned from, but they returned with two lovely blue cod on the back of Leighs bike - amazing what you can catch in the country they said! As he now had too much choice in foods, he gave us a Crayfish he had only caught the day before. Made for a lovely mornay the next night.

The Peak Brewery garden bar seemed a to be a sign. What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon and only 5mins down the road to our campsite. Nice music and pleasant relaxing vibe coming from the 10 or so guests already soaking it up.

Peak Brewery Garden Bar

The beer was ok given it was not overly chilled or indeed gassed but one could still enjoy the moment which we did. The brewer Rhys turned up after having been serving his wares at the Clareville music Festival over the weekend but was not a sellout. He has been brewing out of his shed for eight years and has an on licence but really doesn't appear to have taken the concept past the two picnic tables under the gazebos. We enjoyed the moment and took a 1ltr glass rigger each of his IPA  and Golden Lager which I knew would improve with some chilling. Alas this still didn't manage to improve the fact it was still dead flat, in fact the only way to improve it was to mix it 50/50 with commercial beer to give it a head and doggedly drink on.
Lesser men I know wouldn't have perservered but they hadn't paid the $10a litre I had. I can't  positively recommend this beer.