After the Dunedin Marathon: Oamaru

The Route: Dunedin → Moeraki → Oamaru → Dunedin Airport Logistics: Hire car, about 1 hour 20 minutes north on State Highway 1, with the Moeraki Boulders 50 minutes along the way. Marathon Month: September Duration: 1 night

Dunedin ──(approx. 50 mins, SH1)──> Moeraki Boulders ──(approx. 35 mins)──> Oamaru
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         Dunedin Airport (DUD) ◄──(approx. 1 hr 40 mins by car)────────────────┘

The Dunedin Marathon finishes at Emerson's Brewery in mid-September. An hour and a half north up the coast, Oamaru is a small town built in the 1870s and 1880s from a creamy local limestone, when frozen meat and grain made it rich. Its old harbour quarter is almost intact, and at dusk its little penguins come in from the sea.

September in Oamaru is early spring: cool days, cold evenings, and the start of the little blue penguins' breeding season, when numbers coming ashore each evening begin to rise. The weather on the coast is changeable; bring a warm jacket for the penguin viewing, which is outdoors after dark.

The drive north on State Highway 1 follows the coast for part of the way. Stop at Moeraki first.

The Moeraki Boulders

On Koekohe Beach, just south of the fishing village of Moeraki, a cluster of large, almost perfectly spherical boulders sits at the edge of the surf. They are concretions, formed on the seabed around 60 million years ago and slowly exposed as the cliffs behind the beach eroded. Some are over two metres across. A short path from the car park leads down to the beach, and the sand is flat and firm. Visit at low tide, when more boulders are exposed; check the tide times.

Night One: Oamaru

Oamaru's Victorian Precinct, on Harbour and Tyne Streets by the old port, is a few blocks of whitestone warehouses and grain stores now used by bookbinders, galleries, cafés and a distillery. The streets are flat and short, the right scale for the second day after a marathon. Steampunk HQ, in an old grain store, fills its rooms and yard with machines built from scrap in a Victorian science-fiction style; it is indoors and level.

The Oamaru Blue Penguin Colony, at the harbour's edge, is home to little blue penguins, kororā, the world's smallest penguin species. Each evening after sunset, groups of penguins come out of the water and cross the rocks to their nests, watched from a covered grandstand. Photography is not allowed. Book ahead and check the evening viewing time, which follows sunset.

Where to stay: The Brydone Hotel, on Thames Street in a whitestone building of the 1880s, is a short walk from the precinct and the penguins. Bed and breakfasts in the town's Victorian villas are the alternative.

Where to eat: Fleurs Place, on the old jetty at Moeraki, is known across New Zealand for serving the fish landed by the village's boats; book, and check opening days, which vary in the off-season. In Oamaru, the precinct's cafés serve breakfast and lunch.

Getting to Dunedin Airport

Dunedin Airport (DUD) is about 1 hour 40 minutes south of Oamaru by car on State Highway 1, bypassing the city. Christchurch Airport (CHC) is about 3 hours north, if the next flight leaves from there.