Cycling in Totara Valley & meeting Silverstream Clydesdales

Tuesday 12 May

It was a reasonably chilly night with clear starry skies above - see Louis’ GoPro pics in a separate post.

I’d been googling things to see & do in the area, and despite the nearest town being called Cave, apparently the titular caves are all on private land and therefore not easily (or at all) accessible. Instead we set off on our bikes along a section of the Central Southern cycle trail for a couple of Kms then turned off the main road up into the hills and onto the Totara Valley in search of a heritage limestone bridge… reader, it was not that exciting!

We cycled a loop of around 25km, crossed 3 limestone bridges including the one we went looking for, met a huge bull, passed many sheep and viewed some interesting limestone karst scenery in the distance. TBH the most exciting thing on this outing was the lovely church at the Hays Road junction that was being renovated as a home - it looked gorgeous! I was also delighted to meet the Stern Angus, but it turned out that Billy Big Balls was a big scaredy, he huffed a lot at me and then skedaddled away to the far side of the paddock.

Lovely cycle ride in the sunshine, but still a bit nippy!

Back at Banjo we had lunch, a quick siesta and then packed up to head about 25km further inland to Kimbell where we’d booked in to stay at Silverstream Clydesdales for the night - $25 park over property, with the added attraction of gorgeous Clydesdale horses grazing in the paddocks next door. They also offer a meet&greet experience for $30pp but our budget is tight with fuel prices so high so we just said hello to the gentle giants over the fence! Right next to us were mum Emily and her fluffy filly Lottie who was super friendly. Further along we met big Basil (18 hands high) and Billy (17 hands high) - amazing how tall these horses are.

Susie & Cate were lovely hosts and we had a chat with them as they unboxed Zena, their Clydesdale/thoroughbred mare who’d just been to a specialist for a back appointment. Zena was on a bit of a diet to keep her weight down, and was very food focussed - Louis was not sharing his Coke Zero with her, whatever she thought 😆

They only have one van or Moho staying at the POP at a time so that the horses are not overwhelmed and the experience feels more personal for the campers.

We had another one pot chicken casserole using up some of the yellow scaloppini from Timaru market for dinner then tried to watch “Send Help” on the TV but it was too cringey and we gave up and went to sleep early!