Sorry for the lack of pictures on this one, time is short.
Christchurch was amazing, we stayed in a backpackers, a hotel and a truly amazing B&B. Glenda and Rick opened their house to us and treated us so well. We urge anyone ever going to NZ to go and stay at CoastalCliffs B&B it really is an amazing place.
Day 37 We woke up in Ashburton and knew it would be raining all day again. The roads continued to be straight and very slow.Myself and Adam skated over 'NZ's longest bridge' and I persuaded Kari to come and skate the last 18km with me. By this time the rain had stopped but the wind was pretty much gale force. Just horrible. For the first time since somewhere near the top of the North Island I was skating without some sort of ailment and so I skated with Julia into Timaru. It was meant to be about 6km but turned out to be a lot more. The weather turned nasty and the others took about 2 hours to locate us. We were both freezing and hacked off. We went for a BK.
Day 38 was going to be a long one, Timaru to Oamaru almost 90km. All of us seemed to be up for skating fast today and it was quite early by the time Adam and I rolled into town. We hooked up with a friend of mine from Southsea, Graham and skated his miniramp for a while. Adam voulenteerd to get up at 5 and go and milk the cows.
Day 39 started with a huge hill out of Oamaru. I skated the first section with Adam and it seemed to fly by. The second leg with Sheldon was really hard. We all agreed to meet at the Moeraki Boulders and somehow still managed to get ourselves lost and moody. I think we all need a holiday. We got to Palmerston and realised that there was absolutely nowhere to camp. We drove about for a while and eventually found a house up in the hills that had someone at home. After introducing ourselves and what we were up to, Peter led us to one of his fields and let us camp there for the night. It was exactly what we all needed; free camping in a beautiful place. We all slept really well and were up refreshed for the skate into Dunedin.
Day 40
We knew that the motorway would once again stop us skating Highway 1 all the way into the city. At Waitati we had intended to catch the train over to Port Chalmers and skate in on Highway88. Unfortunately it seems that no trains run anymore so we drove over to the port to skate the last 14km into town. A reporter and Photographer from the Otago Times came and interviewed us for the paper and we posed for the photos (I'll post a pic soon, - Adam looks like a fairy!) It is 'Freshers Week' in Dunedin so the accomodation we had been offered for the first night was a bit inappropriate, we drove out to a campsite and decided upon a rest day.
Day 41
Today was going to be a day of rest. The Otago Times did a really big article on us and we will be in there tomorrow too, as it turns out that Dunedin is home to 'The World's Steepest Street' So this morning Adam, Sheldon and myself skateboarded all the way to the top! Yes ladies and gentlemen. We skated the whole thing. Pictures soon!
nat
