Thongor and the Boulders of Doom

Last weekend we drove north from Dunedin, stopping at a fine secondhand shop called The Oddity where I picked up all but two of the Thongor series of chronicles - you know the ones - for a few dollars. The titles tell all:
The Wizard of Lemuria (Thongor the Barbarian faces the vengeance of the Dragon Kings)
Thongor In The City Of Magicians
Thongor At The End Of Time (joyfully, not the last of the series !)
and Thongor Fights The Pirates of Tarakus
Several coffees and junk shops later we meandered through Oamaru.

Somewhere up that coast we stopped to view the Moeraki Boulders, an extraordinary collection of spherical rocks each about the height of a man and lying in the surf on a narrow sandy beach. Other tourists wandered, as we did, in a bemused way along the tight strip as waves broke over these dinosaur egg alien pod gallstones, as if luggage had been washed up from an unseen tragedy. I took photos, sat on one and wondered, as I often do, how to respond to them. Thongor would have known what to do.

In Oamaru two motels diverged on a wide street and we took the one less travelled by. It was, you may say, satisfactory.

Thereafter we headed upstream along the Waitaki river, stopping at Peebles.

That's right. Peebles.