The rain it kept on raining........

Apologies for last night, I saw a number plate over here that had on it (as well as the number!) - 'my glass is half full, the other half was delicious'.  Had my glass been half full I might have felt able to write something, or if I hadn't been exceptionally sleepy after a tough ride back from Karamea (anyway that's my story and I'm sticking to it).  Yesterday, having eaten more fried food the night before than in the last 12 months, we managed to cope with the alarming carpet and decor to escape the feeling of being trapped in a bad 70s sitcom. I don't think I mentioned that the body of the fridge and the door were held together by a piece of wood glued in place so the door didn't fall off, or at best stay permanently open.

Bearing my sandfly bites stoically(??) we set off back the way we had come, stopping at the Four Square supermarket to get bread rolls, which must have weighed more than all the rest of my kit put together - heaven knows what they put in them.  It started to rain as we were leaving, got a lot heavier on the coast road, then stopped as we started to climb back over Karamea Bluff, via Taffytown Hill (I assume Welsh miners came out to the mines here at some time). The climb seemed harder than yesterday, but the humidity was dreadful as the sun tried to come out and the rain evaporated. We made it to the half way point before the heavens opened, so we raced into the Old Boiler cafe for shelter and decided we might as well have cheese toasties and hot drinks for lunch til the rain went over.

The 30 miles back along the coast road was into a headwind and was punctuated by very localised, heavy rain - so jackets were on and off at regular intervals. We eventually made it back to Westport and dropped in to a local mountain bike shop to top up the air in the tyres with their track pump. My back tyre was at less than half its proper pressure which goes some way to explaining why it felt so hard. Going in to the local supermarket to get something for dinner I decided to get a bottle of NZ Sauvignon Blanc. I have set a rule that I can't drink anything available in the UK, but the choice is so enormous that this is no hardship!  Anyway I was browsing the shelves when I overheard a local highly recommending a wine to another visitor. Thinking I might as well try it too, I asked where it was, only to discover that the other visitor had taken the last bottle. The local also had a bottle (apparently it is her all time favourite wine) and she insisted that I took it to try. Since she simply refused to take 'No' for an answer I took the bottle and hence no blog last night. For the record the wine was excellent and called 'The Squealing Pig'.

Today's post follows separately since the Wifi is dodgy at our current place and might not like a long post.