Category Archives: Travel

Christchurch II – The other bits

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Friday 6 March 2026 – In the manner of matters serendipitous, things worked out well for our stay in Christchurch. The weather was fantastic, the walking around in the city centre was interesting and we went on an afternoon tour which accidentally supplemented our wanderings rather well. The tour was part of our scheduled itinerary and billed as “Discover Christchurch” and so I rather wondered what else I would discover about Christchurch on this tour. The answer was, frankly, not a lot, but it was an enjoyable half day and we did get to see other parts of the environs that we wouldn’t have otherwise seen. We had been walking around the city (obviously) in the morning, and knew that driver Brent would be picking us up at the hotel at 13.25, so we had to scurry back to be in time. We didn’t want to make Brent cross*, after all.

Brent carted a minivan load of us around for the afternoon; a motley crew consisting of four Indians, four Yanks and us two Brits. He started off by driving us around the city centre, giving a desultory commentary about what we could see out of the windows. Since we’d already walked around the city centre – twice! – there was very little in this that was new to us, although we did get a good idea of the huge expanse of Hagley Park, which an enlightened government decreed in 1855 should be “reserved forever as a public park, and shall be open for the recreation and enjoyment of the public.” It was from Brent that we learned something about the new sports stadium (such as its cost, its lack of parking and the fact that he thought the money would have been better used for a mass transit rail system. The traffic we saw at times during the afternoon strongly supports this view.)

Having shown us the city centre, Brent then took us out of the city proper, to Mona Vale, an area around a public park in the suburbs to the west of the city. It has some very attractive (and very expensive) housing

and a Homestead building

which functions now as a very decent-looking cafe, offering, inter alia, a posh High Tea. The Homestead has what I would call a conservatory

but which is officially called a Bath House. Walking further through the park, we spotted something which we were never promised:

a Rose Garden. There was a vast number of different rose varieties planted there and even I could appreciate the scent – it was lovely.

The next thing on the itinerary was a visit to “The Sign Of The Takahē”. I was expecting some kind of ecological message, or at least a bird statue, but actually it was

a restaurant and coffee shop, on a hill to the south of Christchurch. It was originally built in 1918 at the behest, mainly, of one George Henry Ell, a New Zealand MP, who envisaged the building as the gateway into the Port Hills area. It was to be one of four planned rest houses in the area for those walking in the Port Hills that overlook Christchurch and Lyttelton harbour. The other rest houses were to be Sign of the Kiwi, Sign of the Bellbird, and Sign of the Packhorse, but only the Sign of the Kiwi has survived. We stopped for coffee and a scone there (scones are a bit of a thing in New Zealand) and then took the short walk to the viewpoint over Christchurch.

It kind of makes you grateful for the new stadium; at least one knows where to look, because it would otherwise be difficult to know exactly where the centre of the city was. Even the vast area of Hagley Park can’t easily be made out, which was a surprise to me. (I think it’s the green area to mid-left of the picture, but I’m not sure.)

After this, Brent took us south towards Lyttleton, which is a major port; the journey there allowed us to see that by going to the Sign of the Takahe and then further south we were going over the lip of an extinct (it is hoped) volcano.

We passed the village of Rapaki

and stopped at a sort of viewpoint. We couldn’t see much of the town of Lyttleton, but we could see its container port.

We amused ourselves for a while watching the container transport vehicles – I had never seen these in action before, believing that all the container action was done by crane. But these vehicles are rather neat.

That was it for the tour. Brent’s route back into the city demonstrated the sense of his assertion that a mass transit system would alleviate the traffic problem. A couple of the junctions we had to turn right at were just ridiculously gridlocked, but, there you go. They’ve got the stadium. We did pass some more murals

and an intriguing but incomprehensible installation.

The day, though, wasn’t done, because we then took the opportunity to go for an evening walk. Obviously. Our target was the Botanic Garden, which occupies a part of Hagley Park, and our visit there chimed nicely with our meeting with friends of mine the previous evening. Janet used to lead the ‘cello section in the same orchestra as me in Surrey, back in the UK; and the reason she was in New Zealand was because her husband, Wolfgang, had been invited to come over from the UK to run the Botanic Garden. The four of us had had a delightful meal together in the excellent restaurant at the George, 50 Bistro.  As with the other encounters we’ve had as we’ve travelled across New Zealand, it was a lovely opportunity to catch up with friends I haven’t seen for years, and particularly interesting to hear Wolfgang’s perspective on the Botanic Gardens and some of the heritage buildings that also fall under his remit. Janet, ever supremely thoughtful, had brought along a supply of Twinings finest Earl Grey, as she was worried that we might go short.

So: we walked along the side of Hagley Park from the George. It was clear that Something Had Been Going On in the park, from the sheer number of portable toilets that were set up.

We think it might have been a festival of some kind.

Our main target was indeed the Botanic Gardens, but en route we passed a couple of notable constructions. The first was an arresting sight of the reconstruction/modernisation of the Canterbury Museum.

The building is undergoing significant structural work, with parts of the facade supported by extensive temporary steel bracing. In the meantime, its content have been housed elsewhere in the city.

On the other side of the road is another handsome building, the Christchurch Arts Centre (formerly the University of New Zealand Canterbury College).

It appeared to be open, so we peeked in. It has a couple of magnificent quadrangles

one of which hosts a wine bar.

It would have been lovely just to sit and while away some time there, but we wanted to take a look in the Botanic Gardens, which are directly opposite, so we hauled ourselves away and crossed the road.

The Botanic Gardens area is huge – 21 hectares – and based around the river Avon, which makes it very pleasant to walk around. We hadn’t that much time before it closed, but we managed to see a few corners of it, such as the World Peace Bell

and the Dahlia display

before we had to start heading back to the hotel.  On one lawn was a handsome pair of Paradise Shelducks

(with a decidedly frisky male and a less interested female) and on a path we came across some terminally cute Californian Quail chicks,

being minded by their parents.

It was utterly charming to see them in action.

We also passed a striking 2013 artwork by David McCracken called “Diminish and Ascend”, intending to create the illusion of a staircase to the sky.

So, that was it for Christchurch – lots of walking about, many artworks and a splendid reacquaintance with friends, all in delightful weather. One can’t ask for much better when travelling, I reckon.

Tomorrow, we have to leave Christchurch; we’re getting in training. Stay tuned to hear more.

 

 

 

*  Brent Cross

Christchurch: I – the city centre

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Thursday 5 March 2026 – Guess what? The drive down to Christchurch from Kaikoura is quite scenic.

It’s reassuring to note that they take some precautions against falling boulders in places,

but then we were heading into a place with quite a record of geological instability.

We arrived in Christchurch in good time check in to our hotel, the very well-organised George. Whilst Jane settled in to our room, I went to hand back our hire car; the nice manager at Budget was good enough to waive the charge for the extra day we incurred through the mix-up back in Auckland. On the way back I got some milk in for the inevitable cups of Twinings finest Earl Grey and also discovered a significant characteristic of Christchurch – the street art,

which is sprinkled liberally throughout the city, quite often on walls surrounding car parks. There are a lot of car parks on the open spaces throughout Christchurch that arise courtesy, one suspects, of the massive earthquakes that devastated the city in September 2010 and, more tragically, in February 2011, more of which later. I also passed the Victoria Jubilee Clock

built in celebration of Queen Victoria’s jubilee in 1897 (and rebuilt in 1930, presumably after an earthquake in 1929). I also noted that they have problems with the English language here similar to the ones we have in England.

The hotel room carried a reminder of the earthquake, too.

Anyway, we had some time to ourselves, both during this afternoon and tomorrow morning. So we went for walks. Obviously. These are photographs from our peregrinations, not necessarily in the order in which we saw things.

Street Art

We took a lot of photos of the street art, because there’s a lot of street art. There are some huge installations across the city centre

Trompe l’oeuil frontage for something

and many, many smaller examples.

It seems that any space is game for being covered.

A standby generator in Mona Vale

Other Art

As well as the murals, there are plenty of other installations around the city,  both old and new.

James Cook
Queen Victoria
Not sure if this is an art installation or a working phone box

Architecture

Obviously, since much of the city was destroyed in 2010 and 2011, there are many, many new buildings. Accommodation has sprung up all over the city with an agenda to attract people back to living there.

One famous post-earthquake construction, a container mall (similar in concept to the Tin Town that sprang up after the Napier earthquake), has since been demolished, and replaced with a very modern shopping centre

and the city’s restored tramline runs a tourist hop-on, hop-off service through it and round the other sights of the central area.

The city itself feels a little….odd. I suppose the lack of skyscrapers (there’s unsurprisingly a moratorium on tall buildings except under exceptional circumstances) and the ubiquity of modern constructions have a bearing on this. It’s a very pleasant city to walk around in. Parts of it have been restored to their previous glory, like New Regent Street,

along which the tram runs.

There’s been plenty of construction of new buildings, of course. The river Avon runs through the city, giving it a pleasant, green, focus

(the statue in the river there is, yes, an Anthony Gormley).

This greenness is not normal, by the way. Apparently, by this time of the year, all of the green spaces have usually been burnt brown; but it’s been such a wet summer that the grass is still green. As we walked around, the weather was delightful – 25°C and sunshine – so Christchurch folk’s bad luck was our good fortune.

Some modern buildings are just Deloitteful

but all the time the spectre of such a recent upheaval (literal and figurative) hangs over the city.

There are also several handsome old buildings which were damaged in the earthquake and which haven’t been restored (yet, one hopes),

including this teacher training college, which is a very striking building.

There is a museum, Quake City, dedicated to the earthquake, which is a very intense education about the impact it had. One thing I hadn’t appreciated was the constant barrage of quakes that has hit the city since its inception. Since 1844 there have been over 20 earthquakes in the area – they’re almost routine. What marks the 2010/2011 earthquakes out is the timing: September 2010 was a larger upheaval (7.1), but it happened in the middle of the night when the city was quiet. The one that followed, in February 2011, was “only” 6.1 but it was in the middle of the day, many of the buildings were weakened from September and so foundered, and many lives were lost in the collapsing buildings. The devastation was huge and widespread, as shown in photographs in Quake City.

Some buildings survived,

Was a Church, is now a microbrewery!

and, particularly, wooden ones tended to be able to withstand the shaking.

But, of course, many didn’t, notably the cathedral and the basilica.

Political wrangling has put a stop to restoration work of this cathedral, which seems an outrage until one considers that there’s not enough taxpayer money to go around and there are many more important calls on what money there is than, frankly, restoring churches. In that context, it’s a bit strange to note that there was money to build a brand new sports stadium

(seating capacity 30,000 but without its own car parking) but not to construct a mass transit rail system which would go a long way to relieve the city’s chronic rush hour traffic gridlock. There’s clearly been a lot of building, many examples of which could possibly have been funded entirely from the private sector.

An example, though, of what can be done is shown by the Cardboard Cathedral, formally called the Transitional Cathedral of the city, which is a truly remarkable (a) building and (b) piece of thinking.

There really is a huge amount of cardboard in its construction.

In a move that should surprise no-one, the building regs were changed somewhat after the earthquake, and ever since, all buildings have to have a minimum 50 years of expected life; the cardboard cathedral is expected to last well over a century. We learned this from a conversation with a lovely chap called Richard Parker, a volunteer at the cathedral and also a man involved with the city’s building programmes.

The Cardboard Cathedral is quite an inspiring construction, both for what it represents – rebuilding after a major setback – and how it’s done – with vision and imagination. Our visit to it and to Quake City were probably the most significant segments of our wanderings around in this very pleasant city; and we weren’t quite done. We had our fourth and final meeting with old friends, and were able to explore a few other aspects of the place. I’ll detail them in the next entry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hiking Kaikoura

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Wednesday 4 March 2026 – The Hapuku Lodge is such a wonderful environment that we both were powerfully tempted to spend the day relaxing. It would have been splendid had the weather been crap; then we wouldn’t have needed any further bidding to remain slothful. However, looking out of our bedroom window,

we could see it wasn’t. So we went for a walk. Obviously.

Kaikoura is set on a peninsula which juts out from the east coast just far enough to make walking round it a decent  distance for the sort of hike we thought we could cope with.

 

It’s about 20km south of the lodge, so we retrieved our car and set off. The plan was to park at the point of the peninsula and walk round it until we got back to the car. However, lots of other people had the same idea and the small car park actually at the far end of the peninsula was full. It wasn’t a problem; we were still going to walk the same distance irrespective of where we started, so we found a spot a kilometre or so back and started from there instead. The peninsula is clearly a holiday hotspot, and I had a chuckle at one place’s marketing of an attraction for passing punters.

The recent snow that had settled on the mountains provided a great backdrop for photos of the very rocky seashore.

At the point of the peninsula, one can opt to walk along the rocks or take the path to the top of the cliffs; we opted to do the latter. It’s a well-presented path to start with, up a reasonably stiff climb of about 50m vertical.

The path then wends its way along the cliff top, past a small and unusually-sited lighthouse

which can only work to the north, since vegetation has grown up to obscure any light it shows in any other direction. The peninsula walk is a popular one; there were plenty of other walkers along it,

all presumably taking advantage of today being the first day of good weather for a while. As you might expect, the views along the way are excellent.

There’s a seal colony on the rocks to the south of the peninsula.

Those brown specks are actually fur seals,

which, as any fule kno, are not actually seals, but sealions. Using the dodgy end of the video capabilities of the phone, one can take slightly ropey video of them doing their sealiony things.

We could see the people who had decided to walk the lower path as they passed a wooden teepee on the shore.

I’m not quite sure why it’s special – there are any number of these things set up in the woods around Surrey, but there it is. Had we wanted to explore further, we could at that point have taken a path down to the shore, but

steps? I don’t think so. We’ve only just recovered from Tongariro.

As we went along, it rather looked as if there was going to be another stiff climb

which looked rather daunting. There’s someone working their way up it in this photo.

Yes, there is.

It frankly looked like bloody hard work, so having climbed a stile to get to it,

we were rather glad to note that one could go round as well as over.

We’d psyched ourselves up for the steep bit, honest, guv; but going round was a much more attractive prospect. The going was a little muddy in places – not seriously, but enough to give evidence of the wet weather that had preceded today’s lovely sunshine. The scenery continued to be wonderful, both looking towards the mountains

and southwards over the cliffs.

Eventually, the path reaches a settlement called South Bay

(I’d call it a town, but there’s no cafe, so civilisation hasn’t quite reached it yet). On the rocks outside South Bay there were several seabirds, which we saw were mainly shags. One, though, we thought was an egret,

and we were wrong. It was actually a spoonbill. Yes, it was.

and it was doing its spoonbilly things, again, captured at the far end of what’s possible with today’s phones.

At South Bay, the path turns back to cross the peninsula from south to north. We passed a house where the post box almost had a turf roof (lichens in actual fact of course)

and another which gave evidence of how windy it normally is round here.

The path led past some splendid agapanthus,

still in flower (most of the North Island agapanthus was over, so it was lovely to see this).

Leaving South Bay, the surroundings change quite significantly

as the path goes through a small pine forest.

Beside the path was today’s Mystery Object;

ramps which we couldn’t believe were a construct of nature. There were actually two of these double ramps and I wondered whether at some stage they were part of a mountain bike trail, creating some jumps for the deluded fools who go in for screaming down steep hills on narrow muddy paths.

We’ll never know.

At the top of the wood, one emerges into the outskirts of Kaikoura, taking “Tom’s Track” to get back through to the north coast of the peninsula.

This led us to a view over the Kaikoura Esplanade

and, blessedly, past a coffee shop, the Bee Box, where we had a small rest and a large flat white.

We were then on the road that runs along the north coast of the peninsula and simply had to walk along to where we’d started.  The walk led past another tribute to Tom

and a striking wooden sculpture

back to the car.

So, that was the Kaikoura pensinsula

and a very pleasant 10km hike it was, too. We headed back to the Lodge and took it easy for the rest of the afternoon before another superb dinner in the restaurant there. The food really was extremely fine.

The original plan had been to take part in a star-gazing session as night fell. However, clear as the day had been, clouds came in to foil that plan. Nonetheless, the moon looked good as it rose in the evening.

That signalled the end of our time in Kaikoura and regretfully we have to leave the lovely Hapuku Lodge tomorrow, to head further south. Stay tuned to see where we go next, eh?