Out and about in Hogsback

Last night was a bad night, the wind howled the entire night and blew the tent so flat that we could feel the tent's wall on our faces.  As a result, neither of us slept very well and I think that I may have a broken tent pole to contend with.  This was in-spite of being in a fairly protected corner of the camp site with the car protecting the one flank.  I was very glad when the night was over and as a result I a little humourless today.

At least this morning dawned with sunny blue skies so we could at last see the views everyone was telling us about.  First up we took the road down to seymour which has numerous "4x4 ONLY" signs and they weren't kidding.  We negotiated several tricky parts on the road before we got to the axle twisters pictured below when we decided that discretion was the order to the day but in order to turn around I had to negotiate some a tricky section backwards with Caron indicating to me to go left or right because it is simply impossible to see where one is going in reverse out of the mirrors.

From there we went back towards the village and went to the eco-shrine which was really quite something.  The artist, Diana Graham, is using her art to promote the balance that we need to achieve with nature and it was at once novel in concept, location and theme.

The three mountains in the background above is the actual hogsback mountains and the paintings that she makes are shown outdoors in purpose made concrete frames.

 ... and this is the view from the shrine which is pretty amazing.  While she was giving us a guided tour around her works explaining each of them to us she said something which I thought profound.  "A bird isn't so much an animal in a forest but the part of the forest which flies".  Meaning that the birds of the forest are not independent of the forest and vice versa, each needs one another to exist.  An extension of this could be that humans aren't apart from nature as a part of nature with consciousness.

 Anyway, we both thought that the shrine was really excellent and well worth the visit.  Having finished up at the shrine we headed for "The Edge" where we had an excellent meal before heading back to the Arboretum.

An Arboretum, because it had to be explained to me, is a garden in which exotic plants are planted to determine if they take to the local conditions or not.  One of the plants thus planted was a giant redwood from california which clearly loved the conditions.  Also, this proves once and for all that Caron is a tree hugger.

 Last on our list of things-to-do in the hogsback was to visit the bath at the end of the world which we walked past yesterday but could see absolutely nothing.  Today was very different and it was rather unique sitting in the bath on the edge of a cliff with the view below.  If you stay at "Away with Fairies" you can get them to fill the bath with hot water and have a real soak while taking in the view.  That would be very cool!

Getting back to camp, it started to rain on and off again and I am now really tired so it is supper time and then to bed and I hope the wind stays still and we have a good nights sleep.