This week I have caught and rescued birds (from the clutches of my cats!) found where they hide proper English marmite here, made my first kiwi mince and cheese pie and posted off all my Christmas cards!
And that was before the end of the working week!
Invercargill has been looking beautiful this week as the awful rain and winds finally abated to give us some long awaited sunshine. Apparently this means we will get a late but long summer, let’s hope so!
At the weekend we went up to Clyde for a regatta. We didn’t have accommodation before we set off, we were hoping to find some when we got there. It seems there were many different sporting events on, including a bowls tournament, tennis tournament and a triathlon as well as the regatta. We were lucky to get a wee cabin in the same camp site we stayed in last time. Just a tent with brick walls basically, forecast was high winds so we didn’t want to risk a tent!
Dunstan Arm rowing club is just before the Clyde Dam, which was the cause of the original (deliberate) flooding of old Cromwell. It’s also the same place we did the long distance regatta, it’s a stunning area and I can never get bored coming up here.
Day one was pretty much perfect weather: warm, cloud cover and stillness: unheard of. Until, that is, the wind wipped up! We still got the races in, the second was just a little choppier than the first!
That evening we went back to Cromwell where we were staying and looked for a pub. The completely randomly chosen one happened to have a young couple inside who had a broad Lancashire accent! What’s the chances of that!? Beautiful food though for a pub, potato gratin in place of your regular chips, for example. Lovely meal.
Dawn the next day was sunshine. It seemed we were going to have a warm day.
When we got to Dunstan, the races were under way and on schedule, it was looking like a beautiful day.Until, of course, the wind got up again. This time racing was suspended, but with such a beautiful setting and the sun shining, you don’t mind sitting chilling for a while.
Two more races completed when racing resumed and I was all done.
We walked along the path beside the river a bit, which took us up to a fabulous vantage point. There was a senior fours race going past. From our high vantage point we could see the beautiful clear blue water, and hear the coxon shouting her lungs out at her crew!
We drove back the same way we came: through the Teviot valley, fruit growing area. We had what has become a compulsory stop at a Millers flat Tavern.
This is a tavern that dad asked me to stop at when he was a here and we were on the way home. Totally random and in the middle of nowhere, I thought he was crazy. Bout, he got talking to the guy behind the bar who was telling us he had been to the Isle of Man TT, and had fallen in love with Tetleys tea bags. We laughed about that because Dad had just brought me a load in his suitcase.
When dad went home, he posted a single tea bag to the tavern for the man, with a joke letter. We never heard anything and were not sure if it got there. When I next visited dad in England he gave me some tea bags and asked me to take them to the Millers Flat Tavern next time we passed. I did that a few weeks ago when we were up here last, the man wasn’t the but his wife was and she was so excited!
Anyway, we went into the tavern and a man was behind the bar. To be truthful I wasn’t sure I would remember what the man looked like, but I knew he owned the pub. So, I said, ‘excuse me, are you the owner?’ He assured me he was. So I asked him for his best cup of Tetleys tea. You should have seen his face! We laughed about the whole story together for a while, and he asked me how my dad and his partner was, and said he needed to pen a letter back, that had always been his plan. He did think it really amusing that Dad sent the tea bags all this way for him, and said the was not a better tea in the world, they were at home for safe keeping! We got another two free pints!
There was also lots going on there too, within a few minutes the tavern was full to the brim. When we went back out the car park was full of 4×4’s and trailers with trials bikes. There was some kind of off road motorbike event on here today also!
So, a grand weekend was had and another laugh in Millers Flat!
Melanie Magowan 