At the start of winter I had a work trip to Invercargil in the deep south, and took two days off for a road trip with my good friend Blaine who lives there. We were hoping to get to St. Bathan's in Central Otago over night, but there was a patch of bad weather (even worse than usual Southland weather!) and many of the roads looked like closing. Instead we had a warm night inside with some DVDs and a shorter trip the next day to Te Anau and Lake Manapouri on safer roads. Even then, it was a bit dicey for parts of the way, especially on one of the more scenic routes we took going through the small town of Mossburn.
I've split my one day road trip into three whole blog posts, as the images from each leg are quite different, and I think (?) interesting enough to warrant three posts! We didn't see much of Mossburn other than the general store, rugby field and playground across the road - but I'm not sure there is really much more there anyway! But it was a lot of fun to walk around exploring and photographing in the snow, as it has been a long time since I was in heavy snow. Of course like a northerner I wasn't correctly attired for the weather, and had to tread carefully to prevent my shoes soaking through.
Mossburn was a good resting point after hard driving on the snowy roads, and I can even recommend the general store as having surprisingly good coffee! Maybe not Ponsonby Road standards, but definitely not terrible, and very welcome after walking around in the cold.