Things that go beep in the night

Things that go beep in the night

For the first night in ages Ermintrude was quiet because we didn’t have rain thumping on the roof.  However, at some point in the early morning, I heard a faint beep.  Ermintrude’s router does that if it loses internet connection.  I checked and there was no problem with the connection.  I rebooted the router, but still the beeping.  Then Diane woke up and she heard it too.  We checked out phones, but they were both charged, as was the laptop.  I even checked the mouse!  Eventually we traced it to Ermintrude’s phone.  Mystery solved!

Leaving the site we were once more in “Wow” country.  SH 6 runs through the Buller Gorge, with the white waters of the river flowing majestically through it and densely wooded slopes on either side.  However, there were so many roadworks along this stretch that it began to feel like the M1.

As we approached one section, on an S-bend, there was a stop/go board firmly planted in the road.  A workman told us we’d be here for a while because they were clearing loose stones from the cliff as the road was part of the route for an upcoming marathon.  We walked round the curve to see what they were doing.  There were a couple of guys abseiling down the cliff and basically smacking the rocks with a hammer.  If anything was loose it fell down onto the road.

We were there about 20 minutes.  When we finally set off, we were third in a long line of vehicles, for which I was quite glad.  There were several single lane sections, so tucked in behind two cars I didn’t have to worry too much about traffic coming the other way.  One section was literally a ledge hacked out of the cliff and overhung by rock – and there were double trailer trucks coming the other way!  I gave up my position in the convoy to get a photo of it.

Some of the warning signs were quite amusing.  There was one saying “Shoulder Closed”; the shoulder had broken off and dropped into the river.  And I couldn’t work out what the one saying “Slumps” meant!

We stopped for a coffee at Murchison which is a very industrialised ribbon development, rather than the little town we were expecting.  Then it was back to hairpin bends and steep climbs until we came to a warning sign for steep hill.  Rounding a bend, we found ourselves on an open plain with the road going downhill in a straight line for about 2km.  What took all morning to get up took a couple of minutes to get down.

After that, the remaining route to Nelson was relatively uneventful.  We’re in Nelson City Top 10, just a couple of km from the city centre, which we’ll be exploring tomorrow.