Jan 28th

Enjoyed our stay at the Grosvenor Hotel which had strange, funky art work adorning its walls including very distinctive loo signs which were rather surprising! Hotels are good but motels are better for us and NZ as they give more freedom and independence. However we had a great continental breakfast and set off at 7.50am - scandalously late! After about 5 miles of hills the rest of the journey was flat and the weather beautiful. After a couple of hours and at  last we found a coffee shop that was open [it is Sunday here] based in a fruit farm and so as for customers to be in no doubt there was a old fashioned cart containing enormous strawberries ie about 2ft in circumference.Whapping images are used a lot here - a day or so ago we passed a salmon factory with a 15ft salmon adorning the gateway. Linda did whatapp Ben to ask if he had caught one as big as the one she photographed but no reply!
The lowlight of our journey since leaving Auckland was a stretch of road, about 3/4 mile in length with its top surface removed leaving a surface of small sharp stones so we had to get off and walk and push the tandem. Cars and lorries rumbled by coating us with a thin film of dust - we must have looked like creatures emerging from Dante's inferno.
After 4 hours and some 60 miles we arrived in Oamaru, North Otago and to the Bella Vista Motel, Thames St. For those interested in architecture and literature read on - to the rest of you Goodnight.
Oamaru has some enormous buildings because early on in the town's development a local limestone called whitestone was discovered which was easily carved and moulded. The main street has buildings from the early 19th Century in fashionable classic forms from Gothic revival to neoclassical Italianate and Venetian palazzo.The main street is very wide in order for cattle trains who once frequented these parts to be able to pass each other! One of these buildings houses the Forrester Gallery with its collection of regional art and the North Otago Museum which we also enjoyed. There we saw mementoes of Janet Frame's life - if you are us you would have said 'Janet who?' She was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962   for such novels as Owls do cry just prior to her death the following year. She spent much of her childhood in Oamaru and references in her books to Waimaru are in fact a pseudonym for Oamaru.