Time Off

As we travelled south the scenery and the weather grew, somehow, more Scottish. The landscape is more deeply glaciated and is more weathered by the major common denominator, rain. As we drove down highway 1 again and again we would say to each other, “this is just like The Ochils, Stirlingshire, the land around Glen Eagles”, whatever. Our destination was Invercargill, the most southerly city on New Zealand, described by my good friend Rod McNeil as “featureless”. Ever the master of the understatement, Rod.

I had planned the Invercargill stay as a bit of down time, somewhere to relax after a very busy few days. A recent Airbnb review for the apartment we had booked waxed lyrical about the stupendous view and how they couldn’t wait to get up in the morning go into the kitchen and revel in it again. If I ever catch the sarcastic, sadistic b***ard I’ll crucify them. Although the apartment was brand new, clean and nearly well appointed, the exterior was still a building site.

Invercargill was laid out by a Scotsman in the late 19th century, a man who obviously had never seen such a flat piece of ground before and decided to go to town (as you might say). He planned three parks and I swear it took half-an-hour to drive, drive, from the beginning of one to the last one.

The town itself had the air of the Wild West, well, not so wild if I’m honest and with Scottish street names:

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It also had a peculiar mural, which I loved because it portrayed one of my daft Grandmother’s favourite heroes, Wallace The Bruce, fighting at Stirling Castle, with his crown on aided by infantrymen from the First World War. A work of art:

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But, THE major attraction was, wait for it, the Fastest Indian.

… the motor bike that captured the world speed record for Anthony Hopkins in the film about Burt Munro, a native of Invercargill. Now, you may look at that photograph and think “but that’s the inside of a B&Q store” and indeed it is, or a privately owned equivalent called E Hayes & Sons and they have a whole motorbike museum inside their functioning and rather wonderful hardware superstore.

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To be honest the best fun we had was leaving Invercargill each day and exploring.

There was dreamy Riverton and its award-winning museum

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The usual weird roadside exhibitions

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Great lunches at remote cafes

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and finally place names that Wendy could add to her ever growing, slightly tasteless collection of innuendo:

And so we turned north, to what we hoped would be the highlight of the trip.