NZ travel: Christchurch surroundings
The scenery in the surrounding hills around Christchurch is breathtaking – we took the road up to Mt Cavendish lookout (where the Gondola cable-car goes to), and found a delightful road the wound around various coastal villages and then up to a fabulous view of Lyttelton on one side and Christchurch on the other.
The lookout may well have been designed by hobbits!
Lyttelton is situated in a bay created by the collapsed crater wall of an extinct volcano. The water is beautifully clear and deep azure blue in colour.
It is a picturesque town – site of the landing harbour of the First Four Ships of the Canterbury Association fleet.
If you have the time, it’s worth tooling around those hills in a hire car or motorcycle – great roads (if quite narrow in places with steep unguarded drops over the side. But the surface is good bitumen and the curves make for a lovely gentle motorbike slalom. Our rather large hire car seemed a bit squeezy at times when large SUVs came hurtling around from the opposite direction!
This is the maritime time ball – a little bit of Greenwich far from the UK!
And there is an excellent museum nearby – well worth a visit 🙂
Cheers
Jerry
