Day 6 & 7: Walking around the parks of Dunedin

You may notice I skipped day 5. That's because Day 5 was a bit of a "socked in" day, as I call them: it was misty cloudy and rainy, so I stayed inside ;)

In this post, I'll be showing you the two main walks I took on Day 6 (Monday) & Day 7 (Tuesday). On Tuesday I also went back to the Botanical Gardens, but I'll put that in another post.

So, part of what I wanted to do on my holiday was to go walking. If you know me, you may think "wow, what was she thinking?" because I ain't that outdoorsy :D However, I *did* enjoy hiking/walking in Canada, and thought it would be rather similar here. And it has been. Summer here is much cooler than in Melbourne, and the woods/forest is delightful moist & cool, still in summer. So I did some planning and some looking, and then discovered, as I laughed with the woman at the information session, that most of the walks are outside Dunedin, and inaccessible unless you have a car to drive there! You can't even get a bus there, and there are a lot of buses in Dunedin! It's a university town, and I can get a bus from town out onto the peninsula, and all around town. But sadly, not to most of the walks I found. So, we had a look at the map and I picked out some of the parks-with-woods around town that was accessable.

On Monday, I went to "Frasers Gully", or as I'm an Outlander fan (books by Diana Gabaldon) and ended up quite high on the edge of a hill, I'll call it "Frasers Ridge"!

This is the top of the gully.

It was a LOVELY walk up. It started by going past a set of local grounds (a baseball diamond! a big oval and a rugby ground), and then eventually started into the woods.

Pretty good climb, huh :)

On Tuesday I went through the Botanical Gardens again and then went to the Woodhaugh Gardens, which is in part of the Green Belt that goes around inner Dunedin, and up to the Ross Creek Reservoir.

I really wanted to walk the Leight Trail from the gardens up to the start of the Pineapple Track, which is one of the tracks I found around Dunedin. But it just wasn't to be!!

Hmmm. Had to walk around to find the way back up to the Reservoir another way. On that way, I took a wrong turn and went up a hill I had already come down earlier in the day, but on the way back down solved the age old mystery of "Why Does The Chicken Cross The Road"...

 

Yes, that really is a chicken, and yes it did cross the path in front of me. Healthy looking chook, huh.

Anyway, back to the walk!

 (let's appreciate this picture: I had to walk out onto a narrow piece of stone/concrete to get it!)

 Top of the reservoir :)

 Obligatory "I made it" photo :)

 Found this quote lashed to the fence that went around the reservoir. How wonderful :)

OK then I kept going up a little more and came across this:

Yep, a glade of small figurines. Bit weird in the middle of a walk, but I figure it's there for a reason?

Then I found THIS in the middle of a bit of bush, which turned out to the a MTB area. 

 The trees in here were huge, straight tall beauties.

Not quite as high as I'd made it the day before, and I had to call it a day before going up the Pineapple track a bit due to some knee pain (all it needed was strapping), but here's a view :)

And a bit further down. 

Tomorrow, I'm going out onto the peninsula, the bottom of which you can see in the above photo. What's out there? LANARCH CASTLE.

Day Four, Part Two: Dunedin Botanical Gardens (first day...)

In going through all my photos that show my day at the gardens on Saturday, I've come to the realisation that I seem to have stopped taking photos halfway through the day. How will I show you the beauty of the rhododendron dell, or all the camellias?? The beauty of the bush block or all the tall sequoias? I *swear* took more photos that I seem to have, but I patently don't have them.

What a shame. I'll just have to go back! But first, my Saturday afternoon at the Botanical Gardens!

The first path I went up in the botanical gardens. Those trees at the end of the garden are actually in the top half of the garden, not in the bottom garden I'm standing in. They are ENORMOUS. 

Dunedin has a sister city in Japan: Otaru. This beautiful Japanese garden was created to celebrate that relationship.

Dunedin is not a warm city. Even whilst I am here in Summer, it has not been particularly what I would term summerful. We've had some lovely days, and as I'll talk about later, there have been some rather cold & damp days. Saturday was a beautiful day: around 18C and sunny for a lot of the day. I definitely didn't need my jacket and actually got a bit burnt! 18C and sunny in Perth, WA where I grew up, is a good winters day. Here, it was a lovely summers day. Bit of a difference!

As it's so cold here (it's on the eastern coast of the south island of New Zealand, and quite south on that island. With the Southern Ocean on the outer of the Otago Peninsular, it gets cold wet & snowy winters, straight from Antarctica. The gardens have a beautiful big greenhouse, full of tropical plants. Even in the middle of the cold winter, you can come here and get big lung fulls of warm air.

Just outside the big green house is a bit of an English/French garden, with rows of lavender and purple salvias.

And on the other side of that, is the BIG rose garden. I have 30 pictures of roses. I like roses. I've been good and just put a few of them in a montage for you :D

Stunning, huh.

They've also a big round herb garden, which is fantastic. Beautiful and structured, there were dozens of different herbs: edible, cosmetic, decorative, medicinal.

The first part of the gardens that were structured was the rock garden. One mightn't think much of this, but it's actually much like an alpine garden, with an enormous amount of tiny plants - and bigger ones - scattered in it.

I love bumblebees. I was ridiculously excited to see them in the garden! They're so CUTE!! Fuzzy!! And they do bumble from flower to flower :D

And there comes the end of the photos of the garden. The garden is huge, and my post does not show most of the garden. I am going back to the garden either tomorrow or Thursday/Friday if I can, and take some more photos.

On the other side of the botanical gardens, is the original cemetery of Dunedin. Sadly it is in quite a dilapidated state, with some graves still in one piece, and others laying in pieces on their square of earth.

Pretty good spot in Dunedin though.

We're on the way up to Signal Hill at this point. You just need to keep going up the road that divides the botanical gardens and the cemetery and eventually you'll get to the pretty awesome lookout. I was halfway up the hill when I realised something:

The weather was closing in. My friend E was going to meet me at the top of the hill, and she texted me to say it was pretty gross up there and not to bother. So, Signal Hill would have to wait.

The weather kept coming and Sunday was cold and became incredibly damp (not solidly wet, just soakingly damp). I had a day at E's house and had a day off walking around :) No post for Sunday!

Day Four, Part One: Saturday Farmers Markets

Saturday arrives with a cat on my bed ad a reminder to get up - we're going to the farmers markets!

Dunedin Farmers' Market!

Right-o! First stop:

coffee

Now, people that know me know that I love my coffee, right? Can I now say how STRONG the people in Dunedin like their flat whites? HOLY SCHAMOLE PEOPLE. I've learned to ask for a single shot flat white for now. Fat Cat Coffee do a mean flat white. I almost had two.  But refrained because the next stop was..

Breakfast! And WOW it was a bacon buttie from this place:

No ordinary bacon sandwich was my buttie. No, it came with AMAZING crispy bacon, tomato sauce, relish, onions and mustard. HOLY SCHAMOLE people it was awesome. 

Fed and watered, I followed my mate E (who had a summer berry tart for breakfast, lucky duck, from here:)

How good does this 

Anyway, following E around the markets to find the best price on berries, was where I was up to. On the search, I found the most wonderful flowers:

Which are apparently from South Africa, not New Zealand. (Not this actual bunch, the plant, the plant!) How lovely are they )

 I failed to take a picture of the berry stall I got my fruit from, but check out the haul:

The strawberries & the boyseberries (THOSE ARE FRESH BOYSENBERRIES PEOPLE!! I almost peed my pants with excitement and the FRESH and AFFORDABLE boyseberries!) came from the one stall. On the right are GOLDEN PLUMS. I have never seen golden plums. I didn't know you could GET golden plums!! But you can. They are AMAZING. They are like a cross between a plum and a nectarine. I am sad I only bought 6. (why yes, there ARE only 4 in this photo.. I wonder why.) And hats off to the stone fruit stall I bought them from: they had a "try one" bowl, and by trying a golden plum, I bought golden plums. Bet your bottom dollar I am going back to that stall on Saturday before my train trip to buy more. And a bacon buttie. And a coffee.

The cherries & the sole apricot in there I got from a street stall on the main drag, where people come down from Central Otago and sell stone fruit at this time of year. The cherries I got - some of them are HUGE. YUMMO.

So yes, fresh produce was bought and eaten. It was fantastic. But this is only the start of the day!!

Day 3: The Taieri Gorge Railway - Dunedin to Middlemarch to Dunedin

So, if you remember, I randomly bought a train ticket on Thursday for a trip up the Taieri Gorge for the Friday.

(Sidenote: That Friday Place Bakery does not open until January 31. Note to self. 7am, way too early for an expedition if there is no bakery at the end.)

My train left at 9:30am, so I headed on down to Dunedin Railway Station to sort out my ticket. (Further note to self: when clearing out purse from previous days expedition, put voucher for train trip next day BACK in bag...)

Also sorted out another train ticket for a different day! Woot!

The railway station was a lovely building and the forecourt was filled with flowers. So lovely in summer :)

Tickets!

The idea behind the train trip is that it goes through the Taieri Gorge on it's way up to the Strath-Taieri Valley part of the Otago region that's about 77kms from Dunedin.

(image from: http://www.taieri.co.nz)

The train trundles up the valley, snaking its way out of Dunedin, going through Wingatui and over the Wingatui Viaduct, before getting to the Taieri Gorge and going through Sutton and arriving at Middlemarch.

 The Wingatui Viaduct.

The viaduct is 197m long and 47m above Mullocky Stream, apparently one of the largest wrought iron structure in the southern hemisphere. 

We passed through some BEAUTIFUL scenery. 

 

The train stopped for 10 minutes at Hindon, for just a break for us to get out and stretch our legs.

 Lots of beautiful curved bridges to go over

This is apparently the last of several old holiday homes that used to be along the Taieri River. The original family that built is still owns it, and uses it. The lawn was freshly mowed, and there was a really good vegetable garden out back. If I ever run away, you can find me here!!

The Wingatui Viaduct on the way back, this time with the train in the picture.

Middlemarch was a TINY little town in the Strath-Taieri Valley.

When booking my trip, I was told to check out the museum, which stretched back a considerable distance and was FILLED with stuff. Out the front, was this prototype submarine from the 1880's. It was designed to latch on and seal to the bottom of a river bed, so the people inside could then open the hatch and pan for gold. Anyone else see the issue with this? It didn't take of, and never quite made it beyond prototypes. They were eventually sold off at a huge loss and many found their way on to farms to be used as water tanks. This one has been recovered and put somewhat back together for museum visitors.

I enjoyed walking around Middlemarch for an hour, and I continued my introduction to NZ slices!! Think I'll put up a whole blog post later about my slice journey ;-)