Tonight's beer festival! We've just sampled the Moa beer which is from Blenheim, South Island. This is their bottle conditioned South Pacific IPA which is another example of the Pacific ale that seems to have become established as a new Southern Hemisphere style of beer in the last few years. It's pale but it's definitely not a European style lager - we had a wonderful introduction to this style of beer last year with Stone and Wood's fabulous Pacific Ale from New South Wales Australia. Mac's Brewery have a couple on the table - their Hoprocker is a pilsner but with tons of hops - lovely jubberley! The Tuatara beers - well we have to get started on them now!
And this is why we are thirsty - an early morning jaunt at the parkrun round Hamilton Lake. Hamilton is the fourth largest city in NZ - about half the population of Chester. Nevertheless there were well over 100 runners at this very pleasant gallop round the lake - Vicky had a great run with over 40 behind her - she was 84th in 33.46 and I got 5th in 20.21. These parkruns start at 8 am but even in early April (which is their equivalent of early October) it was warm and muggy by 8.30!
Dropped down out of Hamilton a few miles to meet up with our contact Peter who runs a small (only 900 beasts) cattle station. Lovely views of gentle Clwydian looking hills from his back verandah - he passed on to us Rhian's excess luggage, which didn't make it onto her plane back home with her a few weeks ago, due to a ghastly prohibitive surcharge which was almost the cost of her flight. Cambridge, which is a pleasant country town in a pleasant fertile valley, is best known for a garage rock band called the Datsuns and for being the birthplace of Sir Mark Todd. Vicky tells me he is New Zealand's premier 3 day eventer! Something to do with horses and medals (5!) at Olympics. I thought jockeys were small but this guy is as big as me - bet he couldn't have beaten me this morning at the parkrun though!
This was this morning's Farmer's Market in Cambridge - 5 different varieties of Avocado, lots of wierd and wonderful fruit and veg plus black garlic! This is a caramelised garlic that we managed to have a taste of (I was looking for free samples mind you!) I really need to find out how to make this stuff!
No comments:
Post a Comment