After breakfast when the traffic had cleared we headed out of town on Highway 7 towards Lyttleton and the Christchurch Gondola. The temperature was in the low 20's with a gusty wind. Before going up in the gondola we were warned that due to the wind that it may be necessary to delay or suspend operations. We had only got a third of the way up the 945 metre slope when the good laugh stopped and we were left swinging in the wind. After a couple of minutes however we were on the go again and reached the gondola station at the top of Port Hills without further incident. Although it was fairly cloudy the views from the to were worth the ride up and we gazed across the city of Christchurch in one direction, the Canterbury Plains and the Southern Alps in another and dramatic views of Banks Penisula, Lake Ellesmere and Lyttleton Harbour to the south and east. As the wind was still blowing strongly we decided not to chance our look and get back to the bottom while we could and even then we had 2 stops on the way down when the wind was gusting.

We made coffee in the car park before heading into the centre of Christchurch - so many familiar street names. We eventually found a car park with enough space to allow us to manoeuvre and park off Gloucester Street, a short walk to the centre. The first thing we noticed was the number of cranes on the skyline with large scale building works going on all around. When we looked more closely we could see that a large number of tall building had been abandoned and also piles of rubble where buildings had been demolished or empty spaces where buildings once stood. First we headed to Cathedral Square, the site of the Cathedral which was extensively damaged during the earthquake in 2011 and the main tower was destroyed. No restoration work was yet underway and we were told that they were still trying to decide whether to demolish the structure and rebuild or carry out the extensive repairs that would be required. We visited the 'cardboard cathedral' built as a temporary structure in place of the damaged cathedral - a simple but quite amazing building and also the site of the CTV building where the majority of the 185 people that were killed in the earthquake and the site is marked by white chairs, some office chairs, dining chairs, wheel chairs and a babies seat one for every person killed. Quite moving!
We then went to the Restart City Mall one of the main shopping areas which had been extensively damaged. Major reconstruction works were going on all around but in order to keep business' s going, many were operating out of modified shipping containers with Windows and fitted out like ordinary shops. The Bridge of Remembrance by the River Anvon guided us towards the Botanic Gardens where we spent a couple of hours wandering around some amazing img trees and shrubs. It was then back along Worcester Boulevard to the motor home and on to Countdown Supermarket to get steaks to cook on the bbq and finally back to the site for the night.
Distance travelled - 39 km