Fox To Fox

Today was our second rest day of the trip and several months ago we'd booked a guided walk up on the Fox Glacier (Jan is officially the most advanced planner I've ever known). As luck would have it, of the 200 rainy days a year here, this wasn't one of them.

It's a bloomin scorcher! Clear blue skies and glorious views of the mountains (I resist saying awesome, now referred to as the dreaded 'A' word).

The Glacier is pretty huge (12km long) and we ambled along a track to get to it, then donned our crampons and off we went; to see some crevasses, big rocks, how to use an ice axe and to explore some of the rugged glacier. We were so jammy with the weather, as yesterday it would have been very grim up there indeed.

I think the luck from the bird who plopped on me at dinner a few nights back is holding!

As it was I got rather chilly where we stopped for our snacks, a poor choice of position by our rather irksome guide Finn. So I made an oversize waterproof jacket nest, thanks to Uncle Phil and disappeared for a little while under it.

I re-emerged when it was time to move on to stomp along some more ice. It was a memorable experience to walk on the Glacier and is gonna help me understand a tiny bit more what my nearest and dearest is going through in May. But I'm now rather looking forward to the wind in my hair, my seat back wiggling on the saddle. I'm ready for my bike.

Back at our base Jan and I felt rather fatigued, but concluding that we'd have a good sleep tonight we made a plan. Jan and Phil cycled to Lake Matheson to then walk round and I popped on my trainers to run there. Well, that is well up there in my top 10 most memorable runs ever. The perfect skies allowed a rare view of Mount Cook on the way to and around the lake. That was AWEsome. I only had my camera and not my phone so am unable to share a photo here sadly.

Running on jungle lined trails is a fast-track to a runner's high and I smiled all the way round, feeling very much alive. 

Perhaps my aliveness was also in part due to not having just cycled 60 odd miles as per the other days?!

Jan was so excited to see me when our paths crossed on the way round she fell over backwards into some lichen! 

So now I think it's time to go and eat another steak the size of my head.