Not so sensible, Mima

To celebrate feeling slightly better in the buttock area I decided that Bean and I deserved a walk at Bortons Pond today. 

It being lunchtime when we left home, I knew that the coos would have just been milked and the tanker wouldn't have appeared yet to collect it, so I stopped at their shed en route to fill up my churn. It was a cloudy day and the milk would be fine in the car for an hour while we walked.

It was a surprise to see that the Pond was still drained, 9 days on from our last visit. I didn't spot any trout activity this time, but pied stilts were there in numbers, along with increased numbers of shags and herons. The NZ scaup and Australian coots were still hanging out together in an area of deep water. And a few geese and swans were pottering along the margins.

We had a wonderful circuit walk, thanks to the ford still being high and dry (first extra). There was one other pedestrian with dogs, far over on the other side of the Pond, and other than that the only people we saw were the engineers on and under the outlet bridge. They were packing up all their gear and heading off, jobs done.

By the time I spoke to them - on the final leg of the walk - the clouds were clearing rapidly and the sun was getting quite warm. The view up the Waitaki River was wonderful, with snow on the mountain tops (second extra).

We reached the car, ready for home. Bean stood by the boot, waiting to be let in. I put my hand into my coat pocket. No car key. It wasn't in any of my pockets, no matter how often I put my hand in each one. No key.

Silly old fool that I am, I had put it into the deep pocket with my hankie in it. Evidently I had pulled it out when getting my hankie to blow my nose. I tried to recall when and where I had blown my nose on the one hour walk...with little success.

There was nothing for it but to retrace our steps and hope to goodness I could find it. 

Bean couldn't believe her luck as we set off from the car once again. She shot off ahead, prancing and bouncing happily. I plodded along behind her rather less enthusiastically and with my eyes raking the track, looking for the damned key.

After 20 minutes and no luck we reached the part of the walk where I had decided to go slightly off-piste for a kilometre or so...along a path through rank grass. I regretted that decision by now because I didn't rate my chances of seeing the key in the undergrowth. Nothing ventured though, I wandered along, head down, eyes fixed on the ground. Bean boinged about chasing smells having the most wonderful time.

Back on the track again and still no key. I said out loud to Bean "I bet I just walked past it. I'm not going to find it now." But 20 metres further on, at the point furthest from the car, there it was, lying there waiting for me to find it. I whooped with delight and took a photo of the offending article for posterity (and Blip).

So that's the main.

The final half hour's walk back to the car was much more relaxed and enjoyable...until I remembered that 5 litres of milk would be getting quite hot under the now blazing sun. So the last few hundred metres were at speed.

I'm not sure how an unexpected 10km walk is going to affect my hamstring; time will tell. Bean has been unconscious since we got home. It's the longest walk she's had for three weeks...and of course she covered a lot more than 10km.

It ended up a good day.

Thank you for all the love for the Pirate yesterday, and for putting him on the front page, which he would have loved!