Stanley

Up earlyish again & off to Staveley - that's it in the 2nd pic! Bruce bought me a butty for lunch at the shop

I helped Bruce get them in the trailer & said "is that Goliath?" he affirmed, & asked if I recognised mine. I likewise affirmed I certainly did :-))

It was my partner from the Edoras adventure & my Rohan steed, Stanley :-))
We set off about 10
The chap is Bruce. The nags're in the trailer (they're called floats here)









Well you can see that in the 3rd pic.


Guess which one's Goliath ;-)

Pic 4 is where we were going - Lake Emma & then up by Mt Harper.

The pointy bit above the middle of the sign is Mt Arrowsmith

Almost tacked-up & ready to go.

Mt Sunday is along the same track we used to get there, which runs westish out of Mt Somers village. Quite a long way along actually!

The next few are of the old mining hut by Lake Emma
These oldtimers were tough, eh?

If you look (really hard ;-p ) you can just see the white of the trailer across the lake.

We continued out of shot to the left . . . . . . . . . . .

Nice BIG horsees :-)) Unlike Monty at Rubicon
Our route lay along the lakeside - L to R

After riding round most of Emma, we saw a couple of cyclists comming down the valley west of Harper
We went up the valley for about an hour - as far as the snow line, & stopped for our butties.

Sorry Gill - no pics of my butty ;-P. It was well good, though, I was starving (well maybe just ravenous?)

Here's a pic of 1 of Bruce's butties, though
And Goliath's looking hopeful.

I'd brought a carrot in the bumbag & gave 1/2 to Bruce & Stanley had the green bit at the top. It was a BIG carrot


Sorry Gill. No pic - haha

I had a bit of a wander into a little dip by a stream & took this of my 3 comrades up on the ridge.

Bleak isn't it?

I kept wondering where the 2 cyclists had come from?

This is a bit of flora - a well cool, round, brown bushy thingy (apologies to David bellamy ;-p )

It felt good, too

You can just see Goliath's head, too. Like I said, bleak. I was glad I'd put my woolly socks & silk LJ's on!

I got Bruce to pose in the dry river bed by this little stream & waterfall. I think his beard is bigger than last time?

This is looking into the main valley leading to Erewhon. Lots of bush. The dry river we'd followed is to our left

We continued L towards a gate which would take us around another lake & back round Roundabout to the trailer.

Unfortunately, some clever sod had replaced the gate with a stile ? ?

We tried following the fence, but it got way too boogy to take the horses' weight, so we had to backtrack around Emma. We got back to the trailer around 4, so we'd been out about 5 hours.

And it was brilliant. Thanks Bruce :-))

We stopped on the way back to Mt Somers. I think Bruce said it was the oldest building on South Island? But I may be misremembering.

The cracks are quake damage! And we're miles from Christchurch












I took a pic of a map & sketched in the route, bit it's not showing on the SD card! I just stopped & took another, & that's not appeared either - weird. The pics I took over the last few days are out of focus on the right, so maybe the NZ camera demon has struck again?
Anyway, almost out of dosh on the Global Gossip card, so, for now

OAO