Otago Rail Trail Day 2 – a curly one

The Trail today wended its way through some hills. Thanks to it being a rail trail that presented only the most minor problem. Steam trains don’t do steep hills or sharp turns so it’s all gentle corners and when the Trail hits a steep hill it goes right on through. We went over some great viaducts and through two wonderful tunnels. Made by hand, they were a lovely bit of engineering and long enough to be exitingly dark.

Even through the Track is lovely and smooth from a hill point of view, it’s still a dirt track and you constantly bump along and slide about a bit. That makes 30km a decent ride. We did it in three and a half hours including rest stops. We probably would have taken longer if we hadn’t had a rather surreal appointment in the afternoon.

We went curling. Yes, curling. If you haven’t heard of it imagine lawn bowls on ice with a large stone with handle on top instead of a ball. And your teammates using brooms to make your stone go faster. It’s all faintly ludicrous in even normal circumstances. It was great fun to have a go at, partly because of the utter incongruity of going from a warm Summer’s day to a freezing indoor venue to play a quintessential Scottish game in the wilds of New Zealand. It was all rather glorious really.