Day 9 – Rivers of Tar – Glenross Lodge to Napier

To my loving wife,

Today was a stinker. Unfeasibly hot. Disgorgingly hot. A non sequitur of mellifluous heat, if you’ll allow me the liberty.

My companion has become estranged from his faculties – he has lost many good litres in this sun and they have poached his mind of its substance.

Yesterday two of our adoring and most fetching fans furnished us with candies, upon which our young Benjamain Limpus has grown increasingly reliant. Lately the sugar dust from his crazed snackings has blended with the fine salt crust from his perspirations, giving him the disturbed look of some gaunt pantomime.

Oh but the countryside is magnificent! We have seen many falcon, many good and obedient huntaway and one deceased feline, whose rigor mortis had assumed the most jovial pose!

Today as the sun climbed the roads melted into thick tracks of glossy black tar. The heat was oppressive, and when our electronic equipment quit for the day we sought respite beneath a stately tree. We slept for one hour but upon waking we found it to be even hotter than before – thirty-six degrees at least by the local mercury.

We forged ahead – two brave boys – but it crippled us soon after. A kind proprietor took pity on us, roaming addled on his verge, and brought us into his air-conditioned premises and fed us cool drinking water. The man offered us a cool shower also but we knew better than to derobe near people with unaccounted sensibilities. We told the man of our day’s aim and he implored us to reconsider. He had seen us near our worst and feared that we were no longer sound of mind. Meanwhile, outside, the roads still bubbled with the thick and boiling hot muck.

We threw caution to the wind and set off again into the furnace. Boy, it was a fierce press! I lost track of how many bottles I poured in and around my person, but still my tongue parched and my mouth corners cracked for want of moisture.

I longed for many things on the long and hot road today, not the least of which being the well set Glenross lodgings of yesternight and the memories of a deep rest. But also I longed for the quiet roads and courtesy of the Route 52 that we left that morning. Trading the idyllic country boulevards for narrow and busy mainways was an unprecedented hardship.

But still we brave boys pushed through that heat, and notched up a final figure in excess of 220 km for our efforts. A good distance ventured and gained, and that ahead of schedule no less!

I must leave you now, my love. Young Benjamain has gotten into the cane sugars and has caused a mighty disrupt among the lodgers. I hope that this letter finds you safe and that the barley enclosed remains intact. With a guided hand and a sure eye, it should take well.

With love,

your husband,

Young Tom Plum.