Greymouth and around

Toby and Stuart walking on a brand new bridge

 Visiting Greymouth was lovely although I have to say I didn't see much of Greymouth probably a good thing.

Punakaiki (the pancake rocks) were amazing and we saw Hector dolphins while we were there. Linda is amazing at spotting dolphins I am rubbish. We went for a walk before the rocks and went into one valley up and round into another. There were several new bridges as a few hikers got stuck in the valley when the water came up in the rivers and they couldn't cross the fords any more.
These rocks on the right are all along the walk

Sedimentary rocks

but mainly hidden by trees they are a wonderful
example of sedimentary rocks and they have beenpushed up from beneath the sea by earthquake action.

 Punakaiki is very famous for these structures, limestone (a sedimentary rock) was pushed up somehow (no one knows how, I'm going for the old standby magic) and the wave action has weathered it into these wonderful shapes. There is a blow hole which can spout water out onto the footpath but it only works at high tide and with quite a bit of swell. It was too nice a day for it to work.

The next day we went to an abandoned gold mine town it had been quite a large town but it was abandoned when the gold ran out. At the top of the hill there were loads of structures and holes from the mine. It was very eerie, especially when we saw the abandoned swimming pool. weirdly enough they had all sorts of stuff there like a butchers, hospital, church, school and a whippet track. I mean what self respecting town doesn't have a whippet track. The bowling green was still there and the rugby pitch was still being used.