Yesterday was a rest day, that’s Day 2, early on in the trip I know but there was supplies to find, washing to do, feet to rest and a world to catch up with after my 16 days walking to the end of the Earth on Stewart Island.

Highlights, other than eating fresh food, were meeting two Poms at the backpackers, one with an incomprehensible accent, the other, having stacked his mountain bike, now exhibiting a large sown up hole in his leg, on crutches, he’s just been released from a couple of nights in Invercargill hospital. Another pair, for some reason, refuse to accept accommodation with us two, something about the airlessness of our room, or, the rich aroma maybe.

Plenty of fresh air today, I knew I’d be catching up on any deficiency from my two backpacking nights. Actually a flawless day, I know every day is flawless but today failed to have a cloud show itself and it was even calm early on.

There was another couple of hours of road bashing to get down to the flat, 22 km long Oreti Beach.

This stretch of sand was made famous in a minor way in the film The Worlds Fastest Indian. Anthony Hopkins played the true life character Burt Munro, and this beach was where the extreme speed motorcycle practice runs were originally made on his Indian, and the film was shot here as well. His record, set at Bonneville of 295 km/h, 183 mph, still stands.

Yesterday I popped into a hardware shop and visited an extensive collection of racing motorbikes, there’s a few of Burt Munro’s and various other local crazies. One had a number plate and registration attached, I mention to an avid enthusiastic about seeking road registration for a handmade, in part, bike capable of 170 mph these days. He also thought it might not be a straight shoe in.

Anyway once at the beach, a few cars zooming up and back but not at record speed, one having been left to rust, doors still open, there were more hours to trudge with my boots on, my pack too heavy to consider walking barefoot.

Eventually, around 6 pm, I pulled up under a pine shelterbelt, you can have enough of this easy beach walking for one day, why not crack out the rest tomorrow.

Oh, there’s a nice mattress of needles, should sleep well with all that fresh oxygen out here.

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