We woke on the Tuesday with sore legs, and we packed up the car and got on the road. We had a long-ish drive to Greymouth so decided to stop in a cute village called Ross. We saw a sign for a heritage walk so did the hour walk around the area, and it had some historic mining things scattered about. The walk went past a little lake where we saw a few people doing some gold panning. We completed the walk then sat and had some lunch, and after discussing we decided we'd have a go at gold panning. So we hired the pan and spade from the Information Centre.

We headed out back to the lake and found a nice spot where we started having a go at panning. We found a few odd looking rocks and stones, and soon were convinced we were finding gold pieces. We soon had a small jar of random stones. We were having so much fun and before we knew it we had half an hour before we needed to hand the gear back, so we quickly went to another spot that we thought was good and did one last shovel. We sprinted back to the Info Centre and handed back our stuff. We then asked if the lady would look at what we'd found. She thought one piece was a stone that sometimes had gold bits in it (which was pretty much the last one we picked up). And she wasn't sure about the others, quite vague. Anyway, we were convinced we'd found gold!

We then continued onto Greymouth and stopped at a hostel that allowed you to camp in their car park. They had free internet so we decided to make the most of it that night. Whilst making dinner there was a man making scones that he said he puts in the hostel bar for people to help themselves. He also gave me (Rachel) an onion to put in our dinner. Partly kindness but also partly because he was a chef and was watching me make dinner and chop stuff and gave me a crash course in 'how to chop veg properly', so he said I may as well keep the chopped onion, so we added that to our curry mmm. Later Graeme popped in the bar and grabbed us scones too, so we made sure we got our moneys worth!