Thursday January 23, 2014

On a rest day I try to update the Blog, clean the bikes and plan all sorts of other \’housekeeping\’ things, but more often than not, that doesn’t happen. As was the case today, but going downtown and walking around the historic district of Oamaru was well worth it.

We had a lovely breakfast and then headed to downtown Oamaru to view the historic Victorian downtown.

I picked up a walking tour pamphlet that showed where all the old buildings were and a brief description of them and off we went – cameras in hand.  What a lovely downtown and historic district.

We spent 5.5 hours looking at the architecture and wandering in and out of little shops that had been created from large warehouses.

We also stopped at a working wool grading warehouse and chatted to a couple of guys that were grading the wool.  The wool is graded, baled and each bales weigh about 500 kgs.  Nothing goes to waste, even the scrappy bits get sold.  The average sheep produces wool for about 5-6 years and then it gets slaughtered.  I commented that you wouldn’t be eating that meat.  The fella said “No, you guys (England, Canada etc) get the good stuff, the Chinese buy the mutton”.

There was also a stone carver who produced some lovely work.  Unfortunately we couldn’t carry anything on our bikes, although to ship it back to Canada wasn’t too expensive.

I am glad I am not using this bike to ride around the world, although it does have a Brooks saddle.

We had a great BBQ with Bethy and Lynda.  I made Portobello Mushroom with pesto, roasted red peppers and feta.  Lynda made bacon-wrapped asparagus and we had salad.  Lynda asked me for my recipe for pesto, I have made it so many times, it was easy to remember.  I also gave her the recipe for citrus bean salad.  She said she would  like to write a recipe book and my recipes may feature in it.