Finding accommodation led me to the back roads of Tekapo looking for bed and breakfast accommodation. Unfortunately, having done so well in controlling the bike all day, I had what is referred to a ‘tip over’. This is when the bike tips over on its side when it is stationary or barely moving. There are many causes for this embarrassing event, but, in my case, it was caused by applying the front brake during a very slow-speed turn at a junction. Any idiot knows you never do that, but apparently I had forgotten this golden rule since I was last on a bike. As if in slow motion, the bike gently sank onto its side. That’s today’s riding skills lesson well and truly learned. Bikes are different to cars. Yes, you can smell cow manure, but you only have two wheels which makes them inherently less stable than a four-wheeled car. You have to marvel at physics. It would be hard to underestimate the sheer humiliation of this catastrophe. It’s the equivalent of the bride’s father losing his pants as he walks down the aisle. To make matters worse, it is almost impossible to right the bike on your own. Mine weighs over 300 kg. When I had my Gold Wing many years ago, I had watched a few YouTube videos on how to lift one of these monsters. The accepted technique is to put your bum against the seat, arms in the crucifix position on front and back of the bike and then you push and pull upwards while shuffling your feet backwards. I contorted myself and heaved, but, try as I might, I was not equal to the dead weight of 12 bags of cement on wheels. All I can say is that I am eternally grateful there was no one around to witness this appallingly inelegant manoeuvre. I had no alternative but to wait for help. After about 10 minutes a ute pulled up with some construction workers inside. They were all grinning broadly at my predicament. I doubt there is a biker who hasn’t had a tip over, but it’s not something you want to admit to or indeed have witnessed. They tactfully refrained from making any comment other than smirking, and one of them helped me return the bike to its proper position. Luckily, the bike has special protuberances to protect sensitive bits in a tip over, so no harm was done except to my pride. I waited until the grinning ute passengers had disappeared before trying to move off. I pressed the start button. Nothing. I pressed again, nothing. This situation was going from bad to worse. I heaved the bike around and luckily there was a hill where I could coast down and try to jump start it. The engine failed to start. Happily, there was a place to park the bike at the bottom of the road so I could consider my options. I had joined the AA a few weeks before so, if the worst came to the worst, they could come and rescue me. I was mentally rehearsing the conversation I would have to have with Gill, my long-suffering wife, about how I had ‘crashed’ the shiny new bike within hours of taking delivery. The subtle difference between a tip over and a crash would be lost in translation once she discovered the bike had been carted away on the back of a recovery truck. My exhausting predicament coupled with a blistering sun had turned my heavy motorcycle clothing into the equivalent of those ‘sauna suits’ which were in vogue at a certain period. I was drenched in sweat and beginning to feel a little dizzy. I sat on a nearby rock and, as a last desperate resort, decided to Google ‘what to do if your bike won’t start after a tip over’. It was reassuring to see this was a well-referenced topic, so I was glad to know I was not alone in my predicament. One poster suggested it was always a good idea to check if the engine kill button had been accidentally pushed. What engine kill button? I looked at my handle bars and realised that the big red button with the inscrutable graphic of a part circle with a cross through it was the button in question. A hieroglyphic on Tutankhamun’s tomb would have been easier to understand. I pressed the rocker and tried the engine which, this time, spring back to life. A second lesson learned. I found a hotel with a room that looks out over the lake and the Church of The Good Shepherd. I went out as the sun was setting and got some good images of the diminutive church nestling in front of the imposing sun-drenched mountains behind it. Not a bad way to end the day.

Tekapo to Mount Cook and back again.

I had a bit of a disrupted night. One of my pet hates in hotel rooms is fridges that hum loudly and wake you up. I know this seems like a very first-world problem, but after my event-filled day I was extremely tired and needed to replenish my batteries so to speak. I was woken up several times by the fridge’s annoying rattle and hum, and finally at 4 a.m. I realised I had to do something. I stumbled out of bed to switch the damn machine off. I have a light function on my watch and using this seemed the sensible option, as I didn’t want to put the room lights on and wake myself up any more than was strictly necessary. My watch has an extraordinarily complicated menu system which Involves any number of options from pressing a button to swiping left, swiping right, swiping up, swiping down and double tapping. This design weakness had never been more frustrating than now as I stabbed repeatedly at the small dial to try and find the light function. Analogue watches were so much easier even if they didn’t provide vital information like how many steps I had taken in a day. After several attempts I managed to illuminate the dial and unplug the empty fridge. At the precise moment the fridge gave out its last death rattle, a phone suddenly screeched out at full volume. I’m sure someone somewhere has done a PhD thesis on why a phone ringing in the dead of night will have the same effect as a small ordinance explosion right behind you. Who knew the body contained so much adrenaline? Before going to bed, I had put my mobile phone to charge in the bathroom, as I couldn’t find any electrical sockets near my bed. In the confusion of the moment, I completely forgot I had done this and so thought hotel reception was ringing me in the middle of the night. Could this call be connected to my vandalism of the fridge? ‘What moron puts a room phone in a bathroom?’ was my first thought followed swiftly by ‘Who the fuck is ringing me at 4 a.m. in the morning?’ When I realised it was actually my mobile phone making this astoundingly loud noise, I ran into the bathroom, stubbing my toe on the corner of the shower in the process. Just as I grabbed it, the phone fell silent. I retreated grumpily to bed and took about 45 minutes to get back to sleep. The next morning I was eager to find out who exactly was responsible for my early morning call, only to find there was no call record. Not even a hidden number. This was a complete mystery. After breakfast, I was searching through my phone notifications when I discovered this cryptic message: “Bracelet looking for mobile phone”. Then I realised what had happened. As I had jabbed desperately in the dark at my phone menu looking for the light function, I had managed to activate the signal that makes the phone ring so you can find it hidden underneath a cushion or, in the case, beside the bathroom sink. So many lessons to learn, so little time. I wandered out to find breakfast. There is no politically correct way to say this, but on my last trip to Tekapo I had noticed every single retail outlet and restaurant was staffed by Chinese employees. Even the traditional Kiwi souvenir shop had a full complement of Chinese staff eagerly selling stuffed miniature llamas to unwary tourists who believed them to be indigenous to New Zealand, despite significant evidence to the contrary. I’m not sure if they were llamas or alpacas, but I doubt many people cared, or indeed could tell the difference. For all the world it looked like the Chinese had purchased the entire town and made it a home from home for enterprising refugees yearning for a more laidback society where the internet is not policed for references to Winnie the Pooh and there is a refreshing lack of ‘re-education camps’. I was curious to see if the collapse of the tourist trade had changed the ethnic balance of the little village.

 I wandered into The Greedy Cow. I wondered if they were missing a trick by not calling it The Greedy Llama and doing some cross-selling with the souvenir shop. Sure enough, the entire staff were Chinese. The menu was reassuringly Kiwi and my taste buds suggested I try a salmon and bacon pie. I am blessed to live in a country where the humble pie has been elevated to the art of haute cuisine and this example was a stellar tribute to the pie makers’ art. This wondrous pie was accompanied by as good a cup of coffee as one could wish for. I had already decided to have a relatively easy day and head down to Mount Cook. There are, in my opinion, few more beautiful places in the world than the rest area at the bottom of Lake Pukaki on a fine day. You can stand and look at Mount Cook 50 kms in the distance. I was lucky that the sky was cloudless and Mount Cook was sharply defined. The extraordinary colour of the lake can take your breath away. There was a group of three road contractors having their tea break in this extraordinary location. As I approached them to ask if I could take their photographs, I saw that there was a small, white, scruffy Bichon Frise dog standing on their picnic table in a high-vis doggy jacket. He belonged to one of the men. How much luck can a photographer expect in one day?

The road to Mount Cook was deserted, and I enjoyed the magnificent views as I drove along. I got some good photos at the end of the read and then headed back. I needed petrol and drove to Twizel to fill up. Twizel used to have a large toilet block as the central feature of its manicured town centre. You could sit in any of the several cafes that ringed the central square and watch slightly self-conscious patrons wander in and out of the lavatorial facilities. To be fair, there isn’t a lot else to do in Twizel, so you take whatever entertainment is on offer. The extraordinarily ugly building also served another, unlikely, purpose. It provided the accommodation for the local radio station. For some time, I entertained the deliciously subversive notion that the station actually operated from a cubicle in the block, but I finally managed to track down a small door in the rear of the building which gave access to the studio. I have to admit it was a disappointment. Sadly, this wonderful example of eccentric town planning has fallen victim to modernisation and the toilet block is no more. It has been replaced by a more modest building tastefully hidden from view. I miss the old one. I drove back to Tekapo and, much to the delight of my friendly Chinese hotel receptionist, signed up for another night. The previous evening, I had eaten in one of the few restaurants in Tekapo which is neither Chinese, Japanese nor Thai. Prices here are decidedly expensive for what is basically a dump of a village beside a stunningly beautiful lake. A beer and a modest meal set me back over $40. Tonight, I decided to economise and head for the fish and chip shop. In my experience, these establishments are either truly horrible or surprisingly good. My friendly Chinese fish fryer told me I could have some crumbed John Dory, so I took her recommendation. Clutching my paper wrapped meal I went down to the lake to enjoy the views. I was very impressed with my food. The fish was moist, succulent and delicious. The chips were crispy and remained so ‘til the end—no mean feat in the fish and chip world. The Chinese seem to know a thing or two about serving good kiwi tucker, if Tekapo is anything to go by. I ended the day by trying to get a shot of the Church of the Good Shepherd. I wandered about for about 30 minutes and eventually found an angle I liked. 

 The trouble with photographing the most photographed church in New Zealand is that it’s impossible to make an original shot. Everyone has been here before me and probably done it better. However, it was a beautiful evening, so I was content to wait ‘til the light had turned a warm yellow. I was about half a kilometre from the church, so I could frame it against some cloud-draped mountains. Just as everything came right, a man and a woman decided to walk into my frame just by the church. As if this were not enough, the woman was wearing a bright yellow hoodie which looked as if it had been designed so that search and rescue workers could spot her from a helicopter several miles away. My luck had run out. But no. The man wandered off at an incredibly slow pace followed eventually by his gaudily attired companion. The second they walked out of frame, I pressed the shutter. My luck was lasting.

I made it back home safely after a rather uneventful drive. The only incident of note was an encounter with a gentleman on a mobility scooter outside a small-town cafe where I had stopped to stretch my legs and have an invigorating dose of caffeine. I was sending Gill a text message when I was startled by a voice shouting ‘Nice job you have there’. I had not heard him approach on his electric powered vehicle, and I rather suspect he enjoyed scaring the bejasus out of unwary tourists with his stealthy approach. I was trying to fathom what on earth he was talking about when he added ‘But someone has to do it eh?’ It dawned in me that he was making a jocular reference to the fact I was certainly not working but having a coffee. I gamely thought up some inane riposte with which he seemed moderately satisfied in the way an angler is pleased when they feel a fish pull on their bait but is not entirely sure if it is securely hooked. After a long pause he came out with the classic check mate gambit of stranger-accosters everywhere: ‘Come far then?’ There is no possible way to answer this question without opening the door to further enquiries. He’d obviously done this sort of thing before. I was in an uncomfortable dilemma. On the one hand, I wanted some peace and quiet and time to tell Gill where I was. On the other hand, I was faced with a disabled pensioner who may not have talked to anyone in several days. Would kindness or self-interest win out? His opening salvoes suggested that our conversation would follow a well-worn path and eventually end up with an in-depth and exhaustive analysis of the climate differences between where I live and where he lives. I had to be ruthless or I might not escape for quite some time. I stood up, grabbed my helmet and said ‘If I didn’t get back in the road, I’ll not be home before nightfall’. His crestfallen face made me feel terrible. So much for travelling and meeting the locals. Sitting in the bike has given me lots of time for thought. I have felt for some time that I have little left to say about landscape from a photographer’s point of view. My approach has not varied that much in that I have seen landscape as something apart from everyday life and have always made sure that humans and their artefacts are excluded from my framing. I think I do this because I am in awe of the permanence of landscape. It changes slowly and imperceptibly and on a timescale beyond the understanding of humans with their relatively brief life span. 

When I was growing up in Dublin, I used to go for walks on Dún Laoghaire Pier. I was fascinated by a Victorian bandstand that stood on the pier and used to try and imagine what it looked like in its heyday with a military band and an audience of elegantly dressed ladies and gentleman. In my mind’s eye, I could imagine the scene with its colours and sounds, and yet there was nothing there but the shell of what once had been. I was trying to people the site with ghosts who had long since passed away and whose world had dissolved. Sometimes in old photographs you will see ‘ghosts’. These are the blurred evidence of someone who passed through the frame as the photographer exposed the plate for the long exposure needed in early cameras. When people whom we love die, there is that same sense of ghosting. The locations they inhabited are unchanged and, while their presence has gone, we can somehow sense it. I can remember that, after my mother died, I went to pay a last visit to the house where she and my father had lived out the last decades of their life. Dad was a keen gardener and spent many long days planting and tending vegetables and erecting ever higher fences to keep the ‘blooming deer’ away from his produce. As I wandered around the overgrown vegetable plots and knee-high grass, I wept. His presence was gone and with it the order and neatness he had imposed. Yet his ghost was there in his garden, surrounded by the heather covered Wicklow mountains and the scudding clouds overhead.