Forty Miles of Bad Road

A lot of the travelling we've been doing over the last 3 or 4 days has been on gravel road. That's a bit more technical than dirt track but that gives you the idea. Here on Otago Peninsula we've done all the roads out to the different bays and they all soon become gravel. The dust it throws up here is a bright orangey yellow when it settles and when we got back today we decided we must do something about the state of the car. 

We're staying at Larnach Castle, NZ's only castle, perched high looking over Dunedin. I mentioned the Brits Classic Jaguar Rally some days ago, they're all staying here too and I did mention to them as I was about to back my grubby Toyota out of the small stable block car park that no matter how many I hit, I'd still only have to pay £100 excess. Anyway, they seem to keep their cars immaculate so we borrowed a bucket and gave ours a going over. We washed it twice including the door openings. It's not 'concours' but it's much better.

Today we set off up to the Royal Albatross Centre and had a look round the displays. We decided not to wait for the full tour and walked through the car park to the viewpoint looking to the lighthouse. The bigger gulls might fool you for a minute but when the real Albatross comes into view it's quite easy to recognise. We had a picnic lunch sitting by a bay looking out over the Pacific Ocean. We just had to cover what we were eating when a car or truck came past on the gravel road.

We spotted a Kingfisher sitting on the rail of a boathouse and got quite a good view. It's bigger than a UK Kingfisher and probably not as shy. This one had a crab or something like that and he flew off but only across the road a short way. I grabbed little cam so I do have a pic but it's not that great.

My blip today is of one of the many boathouses along the shore of the peninsula near Portobello. There was a lot of gull activity, as you can see. Shortly before this we'd noticed the water edge jumping with small fry. No idea what that was about but the gulls were mostly sitting about. Maybe they'd already had their fill.

David  PS There are a couple more here if you want.