This morning started off with a delicious breakfast of homemade muesli, fresh fruit, toast, and grilled tomatoes with scrambled eggs from the chooks outside (well the eggs didn't come out of them directly scrambled of course). Pictures of chooks to come in later blog.
Our tourist site to visit is about half a mile away - but we have wimped out of walking as first we would have to go down the very steep hill from the house and then back up again a little further along. The visitor attraction is called Driving Creek Railway and Pottery. It's a narrow gauge railway that travels through the native bush to a viewpoint. They have about 500,000 visitors a year (let's hope they are not all here today!). The ticket lady has a sister who lives in Bristol and we have a discussion on the niceties of Clevedon Pier. As we are a little early for the next train, she directs us to a short video about how the railway was started and it's founder, a short bush walk, a sculpture garden, the pottery, and of course the shop.
The video is informative and we watch in awe as it explains that the founder built the first bit of the railway to bring clay to the pottery, and just couldn't stop adding more track until he reached a viewpoint. Here he constructed the "Eyefull Tower", and that is where we are off to this morning - eventually.
Eric would like to drive the train...
He doesn't realise it's not the right one.
Eric wondering if this is where we are going next.
The founder also built nearly all of the railway himself - he came to be a science teacher in the local school, but only lasted two terms, and became a potter...and narrow gauge railway builder. He started the railway in his forties and it was completed in 2011. Now aged 79 he is sticking to art and conservation.
I think he must be some sort of magician as well if all he needs to do to make a pot is 'Just Add Water'.
The work wagons.
We board the train - driver asks where we are from, and discussion on rugby ensues. He'd come to NZ 10 years ago from Stoke-on-Trent as his daughter and grandchildren are over here.
We are off up the hill, in a zig-zag, and via two viaducts (one of them a double-decker one).
Some other photos were taken on the way up but they were very blurred as the train rattled around so much. Many of the embankments were structurally held up with beer bottles (empty of course). All drunk during the course of the build. There are also many pottery bits and sculptures dotted around throughout the bush.
At the end of each zig (or zag) there would be a a piece of rail that allowed the driver to go past that point, change the points, and then go off on the next bit of track in the opposite direction. One of these blind ends seemed to go out on a platform into the void! See below and later.
We reach the top and all pile out. There's a nice easy ramp up the lookout tower.
View of the blind end into the void from the lookout tower. It's the wooden structure in the middle distance. You can also see part of a viaduct through the verandah of the Eyefull Tower.
Our transport up the mountain as taken from above. They are in the middle of building a new platform cover. It's a good job it's not there yet or you wouldn't be able to see the train.
Eric is afraid to look over the edge of the tower - it's a long way down into the bush below.
Views from the 'Eyefull Tower'
There's a splendidly fat NZ Pigeon sitting on one of the dead pine trees ( they ring bark them and let them die in situ).
We're on our way back down.
I forgot to mention there are several tunnels too - often individualised by work of visiting artists / potters.
We're going round the loop - the train that is, not us personally in a bonkers sense.
There's a viaduct in the bush.
Now we are on the double-decker one.
Back on steady ground we wander along the short bush walk. A Fantail is making a bit of a racket- it appears to be trying to distract us - and then we see why.
We jump back in the car and head off to find some beaches to stroll on. Our host has lent us a book of Coromandel walks.
Wyuna Bay - we are supposed to be able to walk to pristine Ruffin's Bay around the headland when the tide is out - of course, the tide is in. We satisfy ourselves with a short walk along the nearly empty beach.
Our only companion on the beach - a Variable Oystercatcher.
We travel on to Long Bay. Another splendidly mostly empty beach.
Eric shelters from the wind - the sun is out but the wind is a bit chilly.
There's a walk to Tuck's Bay around a coastal path, which, according to the book, returns via a regenerating Kauri grove.
The coast path to Tuck's Bay.
Now understand why they're called green-lipped mussels.
There's a splendid young Pohutakawa tree in the bay. It is early yet for them to be flowering, but we are told later that this bay is sheltered and they often flower early here.
