Day 22: St Albans to Home

With most of the day in hand I decided to visit some walking areas around Christchurch. Started at the Bottle Lake Forest Park, which is terrifying. It's a vast area where trees are grown for logging, but only the areas currently being logged are fenced off. So you can walk or run or trail bike or ride a horse around everywhere else along roughly made paths, with the usual sparsity of signnposts. The walking tracks are very sandy, so after a while I stuck to the roads and bike tracks; and they're all lined with hectare after hectare of aggressive blackberry bushes. This is presumably to feed people who get lost and wander around helplessly in the area for days.

So I had blackberries for breakfast, and narrowly avoided getting snagged. There are roads through the area, but most of them don't show up on Google Maps, and it's very easy to get lost. There are pine forests, half-cleared areas with vast piles of timber, and sandy stretches which don't grow anything but blackberries.

I navigated my way out eventually and drove on to the Travis Wetlands, which were a bit more civilised. There is a loop walk around the wetlands which takes about an hour, and while you are on it almost every sign of civilisation is hidden by trees and reeds. But at least the path comes out again. Saw the usual geese and moorhens. 

Drove to New Brighton for a lunch of fish and chips. I walked out here last time from Christchurch, which took me a couple of hours. This time they were digging up the road, which they do a lot of here.

There was a sealion on the beach just under the pier. I ate on the pier itself, surrounded by aggressive seagulls. The fish was gudgeon, but I can't say that it tasted of anything but fish.

Finally drove to The Groynes, out in the north-west near the airport. This is a Centennial Park-style area with ornamental lakes and a couple of riverside walks, but again it would be very easy to get lost in. 

Had a coffee and took the car back to the rental agency. They gave me a lift to the airport, and I checked my luggage in, did the usual stroll around, and eventually got on the plane. Once again the seat beside me was empty. Lamb for dinner. The First Office came on to announce our descent into Sydney. He sounded so mournful that I thought we were goners for sure; but after dithering about in the air off Botany Bay for a bit we made a safe landing, though at a high speed.

And so home to bed.

--

Jon Jermey
Indexer and database consultant
042 535 0422
webindexing.com.au

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