The ODT reports that the Dansey’s Pass hotel is on the market.
The hotel is a few kilometres from Naseby. It was built in 1862, and is one of the few old coach inns which remain.
We celebrated a 50th birthday there last year and can recommend the comfort of the bed and the standard of the food.
The pass is the border between North and Central Otago. It’s a scenic drive through tussock covered hills but the road is unsealed, narrow with lots of twists and turns so not recommended for inexperienced drivers or passengers who get car sick.
Whitestone Cheese named a farmhouse style cheese after it.
It’s also the subject of an Owen Marshall poem, from Occasional, published by Hazard Press.
- Dansey’s Pass -
Walk the wind arch of this burnished place.
Leave the gravel road behind like childhood.
Tussock flayed by austere Waitaki winds
is harsh, archaic and blown quite clean.
Here nature still defies all subjugation
and I rejoice in blissful arrogance
standing solitary upon the lion’s back.
- Owen Marshall –
ahh bent the elbow there often.
I rode a Triumph Bonneville over there one night in 75. a week later I came back in the day light.
A lovely place, with many fond memories