Riders of Rohan
From Lauder Store, we get back on the trail to wind around the north end of the Rock and Pillar Range. According to the locals, this promises to be the most scenic part of the journey. The trail quickly makes good on the promise, with broad vistas of the three adjacent mountain ranges, a couple of tunnels to ride through, and of course more sheep (dead and alive!). This also happens to be the location Peter Jackson used to depict Rohan, with rolling hills and rocky crags.
We break for lunch in the shade next to a pasture and watch the sheep and clouds float by, and a while later stop at Oturehua for a cold one and a seat without a gel cover. Bustling Oturehua has around five or six buildings in total, but our favorite is the general store. It’s been operating continuously since 1902, longer than any other general store in New Zealand, and doubles as a museum of random old stuff (including Fagg’s Beef Tea — see photo below).
We summit the trail and see a sign that reads “It’s all downhill from here!” After riding through a couple other one-horse towns, we find that that was a little misleading, particularly when we branch off the main trail to head up to Naseby for the night.
After some ups and downs, we eventually get into town. We drop our bags at the Church Mouse, an old church building renovated into spacious accommodations, and walk down the hill to the Ancient Briton for dinner. Our host there, also named Eric, tells us about the Asia-Pacific Curling Competition happening in town.
Of particular interest is the Kazakhstan team, which is participating for the first time (we *really* wanted a Kazakhstan Curling Association t-shirt but alas, couldn’t find one). The coach is a Korean immigrant who fled the Japanese in WWII, and his daughter, one of the team members, was born to a Korean father and Kazakhstani mother in America. Fancy meeting another Korean-American in a town of maybe 300 people on the other side of the world! Unfortunately, we ran out of energy before the Kazakhstan team showed up for “tea” (dinner), so decided to try to find them tomorrow.
