Day Thirteen - Christchurch

Today the ship docked at Christchurch or more precisely the town of Lyttelton, which acts as the port for the larger city. Lyttelton is located inside the rim of an extinct volcano that makes a natural harbour. As we have been away from Wales for almost a fortnight we decided to have a trip to a sheep farm as we are getting home sick.  (As if !!!!) . After boarding the bus we climbed the steep winding road away from the harbour until we reached the first stop, overlooking the Canterbury Plain. As the picture suggests, the bright sunny weather of the last few days seems to have deserted us, with a cloudy sky and cool conditions. Hopefully this is just a temporary glitch.

The city of Christchurch is situated in the centre of this flat plain, and has been described as the most English city outside of England. One of the areas that this is most noticeable is in the naming of the streets, Hereford, Worcester and Gloucester were a few I spotted. At the centre of the town is the large cathedral. We stopped here for a few moments before proceeding towards the sheep farm. Christchurch incidentally is not named after the Hampshire town but the Oxford college.

From the centre of Christchurch to the farm was about a 40 minute drive in the coach passing through beautiful countryside. Once at the farm we were initially treated to a short sheep dog demonstration, with the dog running around a mile up a steep hill and returning with a flock of ten sheep. I’ve seen this on television before but never in real life.We then moved into the shearing shed where the farm owner sheared two sheep for us. All the rest of his 1300 flock will be shorn (or is it shawn) next week. For this he gets a team in to assist. The two pictures illustrate the before and after of the shearing process. After this demonstration we were invited inside for a cup of tea and some home-made mixed berry muffins, which were delicious. Sylvia has obtained the recipe so I’m sure we can all look forward to sampling them in the near future. The farm is called “Manderley”, after Du Maurier’s novel,”Rebecca”. The trip was spoiled a little by all the moaning from some of our American colleagues who insisted that it was freezing but it was only a little British drizzle. And they call us the whingers!!!!

After returning to the ship for a spot of lunch, we played our now customary game of table tennis. I think we must be the people to use it as it is always available when required. We then took the free shuttle into Lyttelton to explore this port town. That took precisely 5 minutes to complete, there wasn’t a lot there! Over tea we watched the workers in the container terminal loading the lorries. Sylvia thought that this would be a nice job and is thinking of retraining. Any thoughts??

Our dinner table situation has now stabilised and we dine each night with PJ and Joan from Buffalo,Larry and Mari-Jo from just outside Washington DC and Isabelle and Alvero from the Azores. Tonight’s topics ranged from the trips we had all taken, through the Kings of England , finishing with the pros and cons of President Obama. Tomorrow I will try to explain the rules of cricket. Tonight’s animal is………………………………………

Answers on a postcard to………………………………………..