Thursday 28 Apr
Our hotel kindly started breakfast at 6.30 for the 18 of us who had booked for this excursion. Two shuttles arrived at 7am to deliver us to the station, and the train left on time at 8.15.
The Canterbury Plains may look very flat, but we were told that in fact they climb from the beginning. Forty minutes into the trip we were 260m above sea-level.
We discovered that the Waimakariri River delivers three million tonnes of gravel to the sea each year, a truly astounding amount. Most of that must be erosion from the mountains.
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| The red on the banks is a fungus |
We stopped just before the Otira Tunnel and hooked three engines on to the back of the train, so that if anything happened, they would have the power to pull us back up. Very comforting. The tunnel is just over 8.5 km long, and at the time it was finished in 1923 was the longest in the British Empire.
We entered the tunnel at 11:05, and arrived safely at the end at 11:23. Then there was a short five minute stop at Arthur’s Pass to collect some passengers, before we travelled on to Greymouth. Superb scenery, but it felt a bit like the ‘same old same old’ since we have seen so many similar views in the last week or two. Fortunately most of the tour group have a great sense of humour, so there were lots of stories and laughs to enliven the journey.
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| Autumn colours |
We had an hour to walk and have lunch, then returned to Christchurch, this time only hooking one extra engine on the back for the tunnel. Each way is roughly 4.5 hours, total journey 10 hours, so two weary little bears were pleased to get home.
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| Braided river |
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