Otago Peninsular / Speights Brewery

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To the Otago peninsular following a sinuous road aright along the bayside (sharing the road with cyclists in some sort of triathlon which also included canoes) to the Royal Albatross colony. Declined paying the excessive fee to actually visit the colony and instead admired the superb coastal views including some frolicking fur seals and some spoonbills. We tried to spot the local penguins but these apparently return from fishing at sunset. The sea mist rolled in very quickly obscuring the bright sun. We the headed back into the sun at a lower altitude on what became an unsealed track to a potential walk site but this became too rough and sandy for the car so we headed back to the civilisation of the beach at St.Clair nearer the city of Dunedin - weather warm again - apparently NZ has had an awful summer but this fine Indian Summer has co-incided with our arrival. The beach was crowded. I ventured into the large waves with my new body board. (I bought the board secondhand for $20 from someone at the Christchurch hostel). The sea was cold and most of the serious surfers and body boarders had wet suits. The waves were fantastically big. It was difficult to get out beyond the breaking waves with a body board. I caught several great waves even with my untutored technique. I had one tumble where I managed to get the body board right in the stomach and another where I almost sprained my thumb and forefinger but it was exhilarating. It was so good that I only suddenly became aware that I was losing feeling in my feet because they were so cold. I reluctantly came out and relaxed in the sun on the beach whilst my feet very slowly warmed up. The many lifeguards on the beach were impressive - occasionally dashing out in their inflatable to rescue those who had got into difficulties in the large breaking surf.
In the evening we went on a superb tour of the Speights’s brewery finishing with a tasting session of eight of their beers My favourite is one called Distinction. Afterwards we headed next door to the attached pub abd had a meal and beery session in the company of a family from Hull who’d also done the tour.

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Photos

After body boarding
The sea was very cold and I'm just regaining some feeling in my feet by the time this photo was taken.