This is the so-called cardboard or transitional cathedral, a rare example of something replaced imaginatively and successfully...there seems to be no money to do much other rebuilding yet, though there are cranes and hopeful signs in lots of places. After all, this city is only the size of Woking plus Knaphill and Goldsworth Park - or half the population of Solihull. It's still the biggest city in the South Island! (Correction - it's the size of Coventry, but w...

So here we are back in Christchurch, after actually 8 hours' driving yesterday. Trams are only for tourists, but there are signs of the 2011 earthquake everywhere - most famously in the cathedral behind this tram, where the spire completely collapsed and the beautiful rose window also fell in one of the aftershocks. It's hard to say whether the city is resilient and regenerating, or whether it's stuck in a bit of a time warp and not getting on with demolishing a...

So as we set off for our epic drive to Christchurch, the wind and rain stopped for a few blissful hours and gave us this last gorgeous glimpse of the Franz Josef glacier - it's up there on the left, honest! This journey is rather more epic than planned, as the Tranzalpine railway (our next planned big adventure) is shut...all this rain has caused a landslip which has shut Arthur's Pass. And closed the railway. And the road...Grr! So now it's a seven hour drive up...

Two days, two glaciers! This one is bigger than Fox, but the walk to it was longer - though much easier terrain and only one mountain stream for me to wobble over the stepping stones! You can't get so close to this one, but it's still pretty amazing. I thought the rocks looked beautiful, but Andy tells me they're schist...

The photo shows the end of the glacier, the nearest you can get on foot. Truly breath taking. Literally - the last bit was so steep I needed a good ten minutes to recover my breath! There was a sign saying "no stopping - rockfall area". I decided to take my chances with the rocks....! We then went for a walk round Lake Matheson, through a wood that was so like Fangorn Forest it wasn't true. We keep seeing Lord of the Rings locations everywhere, some of which w...