In fact the shopping and browsing of outdoor shops like the Icebreaker and Macpac stores in the mall took far longer than I had budgeted for, and it was 11:30 before I was at Natural High, the outfitter providing me with a touring bike for the trip. I went in with the intention of changing my plans and getting a partial refund but soon got to talking with the engaging branch manager Dan Eggleton, who used to run the Bike Hut concession at Halfords in Southampton two years ago before moving to NZ. He had already prepared a Surly Long Haul Trucker to my requirements and had a plastic tarp that would protect the car from the bike so it would have been churlish to ask for my deposit back, so I left with my dream cycle touring model in Woodies' boot and a clutch of cycling route leaflets.
I finally left town after lunch and drove out through the sheets of rain on HW 7 towards Arthurs Pass. I had firmly resolved that since the Able Tasman region boasts better weather than anywhere else on the South Island I would spend a day or two exploring it, rather than retracing the route of our previous trip under leaden skies.
The first stretch across the Canterbury Plains is unremarkable and seems to consist of alternating paddocks and much larger cropped fields with vast wheeled gantries used for irrigation. And then suddenly the landscape changes into steep spikey hills with trees clinging to their sides, which the road switchbacks between - 100 kph stretches, with bends marked as being 35kph every so often... and the further I drove, especially beyond Castle Hill, the more craggy and Tolkienesque the landscape became until it became really quite jaw dropping.
I can understand why Arthurs Pass is such a magnet for tramping because it feels genuinely primeval as you get higher into the hills (wreathed in long tendrils of cloud). The hillsides are so steep that some are stripped bare of vegetation by recent landslides, and then as you get to the West Coast watershed you suddenly find really dense primary rainforest, nearly crowding vehicles off the road. I wish I had more time to explore here but the rain was so heavy that the flooding river valley put walking out of the question. My thinking was confirmed when I stepped into the Arthurs Pass DOC visitor centre to sound them out about day walks in the area.
Here's a reason for not leaving your car too long unattended in the visitor centre car park though:
Kea, interrupted
I came out of the center with a really comprehensive book on identifying NZ flora and fauna in the forest and a clean DOC T-shirt to wear tomorrow. Resuming my drive down to the West Coast and Highway 7, I pulled off the road a couple of times to enjoy the awesome scenery - especially the Otiro Gorge Road, which was hacked out of the side of a precipitous rock was by hand in the awful winter of 1865 and is still a descent that is just on the doable side if you are driving a heavy goods vehicle.
The West Coast seemed much the same as during the last visit, particularly Greymouth and its surrounds, but at this point I'd found the iPod and was oblivious to the rain and low cloud, with Led Zeppelin IV at full volume. What continues to surprise me though is just how little traffic is on the roads in the West Coast and how small the road itself is for a major national highway.
I didn't have a particular destination in mind but was getting quite ready for a break by 7pm when I pulled up in Reefton, a small town built around the coal mining industry but with a strong 1860's feel with wooden shop fronts and a broad main street of original buildings. I had the choice of five or six alternative places to stay but it was a no-brainer really, the newly refurbished Reef Cottage was quite unique and had a Queen room with an en-suite available. The whole building is made of beautiful rimu wood, but the particular distinguishing feature of my room was the massive safe door from the 1870s leading to the bathroom; originally the building was a solicitor's office and this was the strong room. Owners Ronnie and Susan have turned the building into a very memorable place to stay and couldn't have been more helpful. He sent me up the road to Wilson's hotel where I had an excellent meal of lamb shanks with all the trimmings. The bar was dominated by a small but raucous group of fly fishermen, Mark and his son Sean from New York and their guide Boris who incidentally were staying at Reef Cottage and had spread fly-tying gear and bottles liberally around the shared kitchen area at the back of the building. However loud and exhuberant they seemed to be (there were three or four empty wine bottles on the table), they were great value - it's Mark's 18th fishing trip in NZ and when they discovered I was a fellow guest, they adopted me immediately. Of course the remainder of the evening in the kitchen of the B&B could probably be heard by people on the other side of the street but it was great fun - probably a good thing that the Cottage can only accommodate four guests though. Mark is a surgeon who finished his training at Hammersmith Hospital where I worked for a summer and wasn't short of outrageous stories about his time there; his son Sean is a lawyer in New York - and has a brilliant relationship with his father. Boris is nut-brown and lean as a whip and and knows rivers with trout on the South Island inside out, he's also a spectacularly good fly maker, judging by those he tied before we all turned in at 10:50. I was asleep in seconds in the extraordinarily comfortable brass bed in my room.
No comments:
Post a Comment