Dried mud

We cycled the 'rail trail' from Motukarara to Little River this morning, and I was interested in how different it was from the last time we did the trip. Previously, it was midge season, and because of the wetlands on either side of the track, and shrubs for midges to roost in, there were huge columns of them. The first person usually escaped, but stirred them up so that the person behind was engulfed in a cloud of midges. They don't bite, but it is important to keep your mouth shut when passing through a swarm, and sunglasses are good even on a dull day. Today, everything was dried up, so we cycled past several areas that looked like that in my blip for today.

Being on an old railway line, the trail is, of course, flat, or nearly so, making for easy cycling. It goes through interesting country, past Lake Ellesmere, a large, shallow lagoon, and Lake Forsyth. Both these stretches of water support lots of water birds, so it would be worth taking a telephoto lens another time, rather than my compact which doesn't have much reach.