29th December 2021 (warm and pleasant, rain in afternoon) 44km

Awake at 6.30am. I was keen to get started this morning in case it began to rain. Today we travel to Duntroon and then begin our climb up Danseys Pass. 

Over to the kitchen for Weetbix and banana and a cuppa. Julia wanted a coffee so I shot back to get our bedding put away. Just finished when Julia arrives back and we get the tent packed away under the lightest of drizzle. Whilst I tidied up my gear, Ju shot back to kitchen to give Brody a call.

Pete says he popped on his Drysteppers like it was no big deal. But I noticed he first checked there was nobody about to see him wearing these iconic pieces of fashion....and as soon as he was successfully through the creek, they were hidden away back in his frame bag.

On track for the first 5kms and crossed Kurow Creek. Just deep enough to put on our dry steppers. For anyone unfamiliar, they cover your shoes and come to about three inches above the ankle. Worked very well, no water. Decided to hop on the main road for the next 10kms as traffic volume was low. 

A hare scampered along in the grass verge to our right. At any time he could have jumped into the safety of the fields on his right. But no..... There is a reason they call them hare brained. Suddenly, a quick hop to the left and straight under the front wheel of a car. 

Not far from here we were back on the track and travelling through some Wetlands just outside of Duntroon. Beautiful. Arrived in the quaint historic hamlet of Duntroon. Into the Flying Pig Cafe, a lovely place with good food and coffee. 

It wouldn't be a proper blog of ours without a photo of a quaint church.

Grabbed a beef roll to take with us for lunch, but unfortunately they don't have a shop in town, so we may be on minimal rations over the pass as there is no store up there.

The 15kms to the campground was undulating and mostly farmland. Began to rain with 2kms remaining and the pleasant temperature plummeted. 

Arrived at a very busy site packed with families who return every year. As the lady owner checked us in, we heard one of her young children out the back ask his father, "Why would anyone cycle up here?"  Funny, we'd been wondering why anyone would live up here kid.  The father answered "because they're crazy son" which is the answer we had decided upon to our question also.

Meanwhile Mum sold us corn flakes and milk for breakfast and then showed us some options for a pitch. Decided to head under the pines on the road side and took out the sodden fly sheet and draped it over a couple of smaller tree branches. We set up the inner and while Ju went for a shower, I hung around to keep an eye on the weather in case I needed to put the fly on quickly. 

The kids from the camp all lined up with their homemade boats for the annual boat race and above photo, leaping into the beautiful swimming hole, even though it was only 13C air temperature!

Ate our beef rolls in the kitchen about 2pm with a nice hot cuppa coffee and talked to a fella from Dunedin who was telling us about how long he's been coming here. That was the scene for the rest of the afternoon, people chatting about the camp, where they came from. Really nice people once again. 

There was no wifi at the camp so Pete wrote up the day's happenings on text while I uploaded and sorted all the photos.  We didn't get reception for the next two days, so on the 31st he was finally able to send the text to me which I then copied to the blog.

We hear there have been a number of people (zero is a number!), clamoring for the next installment of the blog, so felt we needed to explain the delay.

While reading through what Pete has written,  some might be led to believe I'm a bit selfish, lingering for a coffee and phoning our son while Pete packs up the tent.  But from my point of view, we only had 43km to do today, so what was the rush?  

As it turned out, it was a good job we got there when we did because that rain set in for the afternoon.  So we sat chatting in the kitchen all afternoon until it was time to cook our sumptuous dinner. Now if you don't want to suffer from serious food envy, you better stop reading NOW!

Ok, I warned you.  Dinner tonight consisted of 3 min noodles - that's right 3 minutes, not just your plain old 2 minutes.  To this we added a miniature tin of Tuna, because the bigger cans don't have ring pull openings and we don't have a can opener.  However, it was flavored, lemon pepper, mmmm !

We were not done yet though, so save your salivating.  We chopped a tomato into this, looking slightly worse for wear after being hauled around for two days, as was the half bag of spinach leaves we also stirred into this wonderful concoction.

Luckily we also had half a cheese scone each from the cafe in Duntroon to mop up the delicious juices....it would have been criminal to let them go to waste.

After a milky coffee and half a peanut slab, we retired to bed at 9pm.