A Fairlie Big Bang- Part 1

Real-time

We left Weedons, south of Christchurch, and headed west towards Darfield, we'd decided to take the scenic route to MacKenzie Country. SH77 runs along the foot of the mountains that form the backdrop to the vast Canterbury Plains. 

We've spent quite a bit of time exploring along this road previously, today we just enjoyed the open road with very little traffic. Mt Hutt, with very little snow for this time of the year, filled the view ahead of us for quite some distance as we passed through Glentunnel, Windwhistle and dropped down into the Rakaia Gorge before popping back up onto the straight roads past Methven, Staveley, Mt Somers & Mayfield.

Just past Staveley we stopped for lunch at a very wet Bowyers Stream rest area...

.... this is also a free camping area but it's often boggy or flooded during winter. 

Back on the road and there we were crusin' along at 90kph on a gloriously sunny day without a care in the world when there was an almighty huge boom followed by 'whack, whack, whack', the rig wobbled a bit and a large cloud of blue smoke poured out behind us. David quickly brought the rig to a halt, I jumped out to check and saw that we'd had a blow-out on the back left hand side of the 5th-wheeler. 

There was nowhere to pull off the road on our side of the road but luckily there was a wide grass berm on the other side. David carefully drove the rig over to it. 

Yes, that's definitely a blow out, there'll be no repairing that tyre! Our first (and hopefully last) blow-out to add to the two punctures on the ute & one on the van in over 88,000kms and 7 years on the road. The ground underneath was soft and it took several stages to jack it up, block, release, jack, add another block, release, jack.... Eventually there were enough blocks under the axle to get the wheel off and the spare back on. And in case you're wondering these aren't retreads, they were new tyres 3.5 years ago.

At least 100 vehicles passed us while we were changing the wheel,  many of them work vehicles and farm utes with burly young men in them, yet not one person stopped to offer help or check that we were ok. It didn't matter because David had it under control (with some help from yours truly) and if we had needed help I would have flagged someone down but it did surprise me that not one person stopped. I know any motorhomer passing would have checked on us but unusually not one of the vehicles passing was a motorhome. 

Ninety minutes and a few nasty scratches from the protruding wire later and David had it changed and we were back on the road. 

We were very pleased to see Carters Tyre Service as we rolled into Fairlie township just before dusk on a Friday afternoon. David popped over to see them Saturday morning and they were able to order a replacement tyre and would have it for us on Tuesday morning which we were very pleased about. As it happened, we were intending to stop in Fairlie- the gateway to MacKenzie Country- for a night or two anyway, a couple more nights wasn't going to be a problem.

Fairlie Holiday Park is part of the NZMCA (NZ Motor Caravan Association) new CampSaver winter camping initiative where members can stay at participating campgrounds for $20 a night, this includes power. This has to be a win/win situation; members get cheaper camping sites and in return camping grounds get some winter turnover. Hopefully camping grounds will find that it's worth their while being involved, I know that during our week long stay at Fairlie there were two to four other members staying each night that usually wouldn't have come to a campground.

We thoroughly enjoyed our extended stay, we had a relatively sunny spot in an area that didn't see many other campers; most preferring to park on the hard on the otherside of the small stream that ran through the campground. 

With heavy frosts every day, temperatures at -5c to -8c overnight and hovering around zero for most of the day, with the occasional morning of fog, and bitterly cold temperatures all day, everyday, we began to wonder if we'd made the right decision to come south again for winter. 

We wondered if we were getting soft in our old age; 18 months has passed since we were last down here. Or maybe we'd acclimatized to the brilliant 6 months of warm sunshine we'd had up north over the long hot summer. All I can say is thank God for out diesel heaters, they certainly earnt their keep keeping us toasty warm inside, and also for the luxury of being plugged into the grid. The electric blanket kept the chill away overnight.

But we did have frozen water pipes three days running which didn't defrost until early afternoon. I think we've only had frozen pipes for 3 days in total over the whole of winter previously. We always turn the water off and open the taps at night so no damage is done but it's frustrating when you don't have water when you want it. And even colder when you've got to visit the campground showers instead of your own one in a warm van.

We were a bit perplexed about how cold is was until we read about a very unusual weather system at play. The severe cold temps were caused by very high air pressure which went as high as 1036hpa, this was well above the average for June and nearly a record. If it had been summer it would have been a very hot week. The highest air pressure ever recorded in New Zealand was 1045.9 in Wellington in 1889. Since then the closest near record was 1040hpa recorded in 2010. Little did I know it but this weather system was also hard at work mixing up a hoar frost in Twizel. A hoar frost that I am determined to photograph this winter and one of the main reasons we are in the South Island.

Over the weekend David decided that we really should replace all four tyres on the 5th-wheeler; the remaining three had a fair bit of tread on them but he wanted to keep the tyres uniform & consistent. So on Monday morning he called over to Carters again and ordered the other three tyres. Unfortunately two of them had to come down from the North Island and wouldn't be here until Wednesday morning (which actually wasn't too bad a service) That was ok by us, we were happy to wait. We had power. And we had pies to sample! 

Fairlie Bakehouse is well known for it's tasty pies, 'Bakers not Manufacturers' is their tag line. Ask on-line where the best pie is in New Zealand and you're not only bound to start a riot but everyone thinks they know who bakes the best. Fairlie Bakehouse is consistently up there at the top of the list with one or two others. And especially their signature pie (actually they have a few)- Pork Belly with Apple Sauce & Crackling. And yes, that is a piece of crunchy crackling on top of the pastry. 

In summary, let's just say the Pork Belly wasn't our favourite, it came a close third behind the Venison & Cranberry and the Salmon & Bacon Pie (an odd combination but it works). Although the traditional mince & cheese was pretty tasty too....then again, the butter chicken or creamy free range chicken.....

Suffice to say we were all 'pie-ed' out by the time we left Fairlie. And I don't even like pies!! 

While in Fairlie we spent most of our time in doors keeping warm, catching up on computer work (and sampling pies!) We did try to walk some of them off by taking the riverside track beside the camping ground but found it to be rather muddy and not too inspiring with bare willows, overgrown blackberry and old mans beard covering everything in sight. The walk was over 6kms long to the end and then you could walk back along the main road to the town. 

After a couple of kilometres we turned around and walked back the way we came although we did loop through the Domain on the other side of the campground and found a frozen ice skating rink which doesn't look like it's been very well loved in recent years.

In fact the last time the ice was thick enough to skate on was 2015 and that was three years after the previous time.  The rink needs a constant -10c to keep a solid base, which, with the temperatures we'd been having, explains why it was quite firm at the moment. The stuff you can see on the surface is  weeds of some sort that were growing in the base of the pond and are now stuck in the ice. 

To be continued... Part 2

World Famous in New Zealand- Canterbury

Catch-up

There & Back- Mt Somers to...

I'm about to take you on a quick a tour along the inland road through mid-Canterbury. As mentioned earlier our first stop was at Mt Somers where they have a very cool general store.

We stayed at the Mt Somers Holiday Park while we explored the Ashburton Lakes area; we'd decided we'd have power whenever the opportunity presented itself during the next couple of weeks. Sometimes in winter you just want to be able to flick a switch without the worries of watching the solar or running the generator.  The ground was soft from all the recent rain but we were able to park in another area, between cabins, which was a lot firmer. It's a very quiet time of the year for everyone in the village; I think we saw just one campervan during our stay.

The Holiday Park was next door to the Domain where there's also a camping area (with power & soft ground too); we'd already decided to support a local business, and not that the money mattered, the Holiday Park was just $7 dearer. The Domain also has a small museum and next door the old Mt Somers Musterers/Trampers Hut which was shifted to the Domain when DOC build a new hut on the Mt Somers Walkway. It's kitted out with pre 1960s farming and tramping gear.

Of course I did a little tiki-tour around the village taking photos and adding a couple more churches to my collection (one of them at the bottom left, above ) and an old farm homestead now a barn; and looking very much like one of our old farm barns. 

But this work-of-art (below) must take the prize for the most creative and unusual hedge I've ever seen. Imagine the work that goes into keeping that in shape. I found this from a Stuff article while researching-

I follow the trimmed arrows to the door of the designer, who describes it as a gardening whimsy.

He does not want to give his name, but the hedge hides an impressive garden.

"It was a boring piece of hedge to cut every six months, so I thought I'd try to make it interesting," he says. "If I was going to do it again, I think I'd be a bit more adventurous."

The hedge has become an attraction in Mt Somers.

"If I had a dollar for everyone who has stopped to take a photo I'd be a rich man."

That's one more dollar not in his pocket...

On my way to Mt Hutt a couple of days earlier I stopped at Staveley and Alfred Forest to take photos in the village including the old Staveley School in front of Mt Somers, the church, hall and old dairy factory. At Alfred Forest I found more sculptured moa beside their hall, similar to the ones I saw at Moa Flat.

Staveley is world famous in New Zealand- Lynda Topp, one half of the much-loved musical and comic duo, The Topp Twins, has a lodge & bar/cafe in the tiny village. The Lodge is just past the church in the photo above and just a few metres from Staveley Store, the old general store which is now a cafe & farm store and is owned and run by Mt Somers Station. 

And not by Lynda Topp as you may have thought if you spotted the ute parked outside! No, Lynda must have been inside having a coffee (her cafe is shut over winter). I didn't go in to check, I was star-struck just seeing her vehicle. And I didn't want to dawdle, I had Mt Hutt to traverse! 

But I really was star-struck the next day when we stopped in at the cafe for morning tea on our way north and who should arrive not long after? Lynda Topp of course! So I surreptitiously took a photo of her while pretending to take one of David eating. I then cut him out of it! I suppose I should have said hello but I was a little shy (yep, that's me) and I also didn't want to intrude.

The next camp site I had in mind was the Rakaia Gorge Camping Ground ($8.50pp, children free) which is on a stunning site, right on the edge overlooking the Rakaia River.

It's a large landscaped  area with plenty of grassed sheltered alcoves for camping in but unfortunately all but the area beside the road was closed off for winter. And once again the photos do not tell the whole story; it's freezing cold with a bitter wind blowing and much of the area that is available has boggy ground and muddy tracks through it, with a heavy frost still laying on the ground in the shade. 

And along with that there's the traffic noise and passing motorists are calling in to use the public toilets, just enough negatives for us to decided to give it a miss and carry on up the road. I really wanted that river view so we'll have to return in the summer. 

We stopped next at Glentunnel and had a look at the holiday park there but it was in the shade down in a dip beside a river and didn't look that inviting. Some days things just don't feel right or go well. Usually there'd be nothing wrong with these places but when you having a bad day travelling, you're having a bad day.

We carried on to Sheffield, checked out a CAP parking site there, which didn't appeal either, and then cheered ourselves up by having a pie for lunch from the famous Sheffield Pie Shop. As I walked to the shop I took a cellphone photo just as a head popped out the door. I said when I stepped inside, 'I took a photo of the baker then?'  The lady said excitedly "No and you're Shellie! I saw your rig go past and I said to the others, I wonder if that's Shellie who has a blog and posts photos on Facebook, I show them to my husband every night!' So it's not just the pies that are famous in Sheffield! 

Our next stop is Springfield- famous for it's 6 tonne Simpson's doughnut- where we check out yet another Domain campground. We're wanting power but it's wet, boggy and in the shade where the power points are so we hit the road again. We head back down the road, back through Sheffield and turn north. At this rate we'll be popping out the end of the inland road well in advance of our intended two weeks exploring the high country.

We cross over the Waimakariri River, another one of the wide braided Canterbury rivers...

...pass through Oxford and head to a camping ground just out of town, one that's been on my radar for awhile.

Ashley Gorge Holiday Park is a very popular camping ground....in the summer. In the winter it's a very deserted camp. Probably because it's tucked into a narrow valley and is in the shade all day! 

Three days of frost was still on the ground when we arrived (the rain washed that away overnight), it was absolutely freezing but we'd been travelling all day and we didn't want to go any further. So we cranked up the diesel heaters, drew the blinds and settled in for the night; we'd head off again in the morning.

Perhaps had we seen this sign just outside the camp before we went in we may have just carried on!

The next day dawned cold, wet and miserable so we decided to dig in and have another day at Ashley Gorge. There was no point shifting, it was going to be cold, wet and miserable everywhere. We wrapped up warm and did the short walk to the back of the camp to check out the gorge and back along the river to road bridge before heading back to the van. It was just too cold to be outdoors.

There was another reason I wanted to stop in Oxford. I wanted to meet a famous Little Owl named Oscar who lives at Oxford Bird Rescue. I have been following Oscar on OBR's Facebook page for a very long time and was looking forward to saying hello. Oscar is an ambassador for all his feathered friends, he is blind and spends a lot of his time visiting schools and other groups encouraging conservation. 

Little Owls are not endemic to NZ but have naturalised after being introduced from Germany in the early 1900s. They are only found in the South Island and very common in the drier open eastern areas of the island, preferring open pastureland and hedgerows to native bush. Unlike our endemic owl the Morepork/Ruru, Little Owls are often active during the day as well as the night. We've yet to see one in the wild but there are quite a lot of them in Christchurch's Hagley Park and around the Sumner cliffs.

We left Ashley Gorge the next day and headed north once again, off towards Rangiora, Rangiora on the outskirts of Christchurch! Twenty kilometers later we pulled to a grinding halt. Neither of us wanted to return to Christchurch just yet. We tossed a few ideas around, and dismissed most of them for various reasons (this is very unusual as we usually have a destination in mind before we pull out). 

In the end we decided to turn around and head back towards Oxford, back over the Waimakariri, back through Glentunnel, back past the Rakaia camp and we hang a left opposite Mt Hutt Station. And that is how we found ourselves back in Methven waiting for  a snow storm to arrive in a couple of days.

And this time we stay put for over a week, relaxing and enjoying a friendly camp and village.