Waimate airport

Friday 10th April: Warm and sunny all day. We spoke to Mum on skype in the morning to wish her a happy birthday as it was still yesterday for her today (?!). Steve got his model aeroplanes ready and we drove the 10 minutes south to Waimate Airport. There are a selection of photos to give you an idea of the importance of this airport. The runway edges are marked with old car tyres that at one time had white paint sloshed over them; and the end of the runway is full of sheep to give you a soft landing if you overshoot! Two of Steve's flying mates were there, and as you can see Ralph had brought his lawn mower to prepare their landing strip. Our boys had little planes to throw to keep themselves occupied, as Peter shows (thank you for these, Siobhan).
As I mentioned, this airstrip is 10 minutes out of Waimate, on the SH1 (State Highway 1). There are no buses or taxis or trains to get to or from it, and only a few farm homesteads on the way. On a previous trip there by Steve, a full-size plane came in and landed. Out got two men from Basingstoke (yes, really!). I don't think it had been a translatlantic flight, though. Anyway, they said they had thought they would go to Waimate to have some lunch. The problems were: 1. they had no transport; 2. there is no public transport; 3. it's a long way to walk; and 4. there's nowhere in Waimate to eat. Other than that they made an excellent choice in their landing site! We never found out what they did in the end.
After lunch we went back to the illegal blackberry bush and picked some more. While I was doing this Steve and the boys were busy playing in the river where it crosses the road. When we arrived all the water was going through the under-road channel. Somehow a few minutes later the channel was blocked with large rocks and the river flowed across the road. No-one seems to have any idea how that happened, but they enjoyed watching the odd passing car splash through the ford that had somehow appeared!