23/02/2019

Middlemarch

The last stage of the Otago Rail Trail was today's agenda item: Hyde > Middlemarch.
But before we got on the bikes, we enjoyed the birds singing outside our accommodation ...
 ... and the rabbits jumping around.
The grandeur of the Otago landscape was of the same overwhelming standard as the previous days.


After an hour or so, we encountered a local farmer "running" his dogs.
We had a long and interesting chat with him and the dogs about this-and-that.
Morepork (Ninox novaeseelandiae).
Passed a derelict house with this tiny owl as its sole inhabitant ...
... and a sleepy Pied Stilt (Himantopus himantopus),
and a Shoveler (Anas rhynchotis) shoveling for food items.
We eventually reached the end of the Rail Trail. The Otago railway was constructed 115 years ago by thousands of hardy boys in the rail gangs, ...
but it took only one Hardie Boys to open the Otago Rail Trail 19 years ago.
. . .
I apologize for the lack of blog entries for the past 2-3 days. Out here in the countryside internet is limited commodity. – Tomorrow we will make our way to the township of Lawrence and prepare to start of another bicycle trail: The Clutha Gold Trail.