Around Banks Peninsular and……Manchester!

I have to deal with the latter first as it’s been bugging us for a while. Manchester, we know as a city in England not far from Liverpool, but it means something entirely different here. We started to notice it watching the TV commercials on Boxing Day, just as the January sales started. The ‘Farmers’ shop, which is a department store chain similar to Debenhams, BHS and Marks & Spencer, were putting on adverts with 30% off women’s wear, children’s wear, men’s wear and, Manchester!

Ying and Yang! (Tigger and Ustinov on the patio)

At first I thought I’d mis-heard, but no, there it was in big letters on the screen with a very excited male voice shouting ‘30% off Manchester’ (most adverts here seem to feature excited people shouting very quickly and in a high voice about what they are selling!) I pondered this for a while and, after seeing it four or five times I asked Jackie if she knew what Manchester was. No she had no idea and the adverts gave us no clue.

I decided the only way was to visit a Farmers shop and ask someone, so a few days ago when we were in Ashburton, walking through the quite sizeable town we saw a Farmer’s shop. Now’s my chance. In I went, found an assistant, took her through the advert and told her how I’m puzzled about what Manchester is. Looking at me rather strangely, as though she couldn’t imagine why I wouldn’t know, she relaxed, smiled and said………’its sheets, duvets, pillows etc’. I was very pleased I’d found out and thanked her for putting my mind at rest, but the unanswered question is: ‘why is it called Manchester?’ I don’t know the answer to this but I’d love to find out. If anyone knows I would be eternally grateful if you would let me know.

A very tired, fluffy Tiffany

Anyway, we’ve had a couple of days out on the Banks Peninsular, which is a group of extinct volcano’s jutting out into the sea by Christchurch. The craters have been eroded away and have opened up into the sea to form lots of deep inlets of turquoise blue sea surrounded by jagged coastline, backed by steep, rugged hills. Roads wind their way over and down into little coves, only one is a main road, which leads to the French influenced Akaroa village nestled into a little bay in one of the inlets, but there are lots of other smaller roads, some with tarmac, others just gravel, with lots of sharp bends, very steep hills and, just when you don’t expect it, a view to die for!

We didn’t go to Akaroa as we’ve booked to stay there for two nights with Pauline, Jackie’s mum, when she comes over to visit us for a month on 3^rd February. This picture is therefore mainly for Pauline, just to whet her appetite. Akaroa is on the far bank, in a little bay, just above the very end of the long, thin island that juts out into the inlet, so this is where we’ll be for the 3^rd and 4^th February. Things to do: swimming with dolphins, seal watching, cruises, kayaking, walking, oh and drinking lots of red wine (New Zealand wine of course)!

Instead of going to Akaroa we headed off to Pigeon Bay to go climbing. There’s a crag there called Holmes Bay that has 29 trad climbs from grade 10 to 24. It’s a long drive over a gravel road, wondering where on earth it’s going, but only about 15 minutes walk to the crag. We thought it would be busy as its only about an hour from Christchurch, particularly as the huge Port Hills climbing area with over 800 climbs (the Stannage of New Zealand) has been closed to climbing since the earthquake, but there was no-one else there. Even more surprising was that it was very overgrown, moss and lichen all over the climbs and undergrowth at the bottom, making it difficult to get to each climb. 

At the crag

We can only assume that trad climbing is not popular in NZ, as there’s an awful lot of bolted climbing, maybe it’s not worth their while buying the (expensive) trad gear. Fortunately we had bought our own, so set to! The rock is described as ‘columnar trachybasalt’, which seemed pretty similar to gritstone (not our favourite), but by and large had good gear placements, requiring use of our rack of wires and cams. We did a grade 14 and 15+ which equates to about VS 4b to 4c English grade and bold enough for us.  B is being kind – he did really well, and I didn’t! Seconding was fine, but I started the lead on the first climb and backed off, the second one we both looked at and backed off, and the third I wouldn’t have even attempted (it’s the mention of handjams in the book that put me off!). 

View down to Pigeon Bay from the crag

Jackie pointing out the crag from Pigeon Bay

Two great climbs in a great location on a beautiful summer’s day! We finished off by going into Pigeon Bay looking for an ice cream, but no, the lack of people in NZ means everything is isolated, no shops, no pubs, just a campsite. Ah well, we’ll just have to settle for these views:

View from the jetty in Pigeon Bay

A small boy uses a rope swing over the water!

Today we went to another part of Banks Peninsular and visited Lyttelton and Sumner. These are on the north of the peninsular by the Port Hills and Christchurch and we didn’t realise the damage they suffered in the earthquake. They are beautiful places and although a lot of things remain there are lots of gaps. We wanted to visit the Timeball Station in Lyttelton, which is the NZ equivalent of Greenwich in London. The Rough Guide says ‘built in 1876 in Gothic style, it is clearly visible from all over the town and for 50 years mariner’s recalibrated their on-board chronometers on the descent of a large ball down the pole on its roof’, just as it does at Greenwich. We have seen Greenwich, so it would be good to see this, but alas no, it’s gone! The place where it stood is now open ground, very sad!

Lyttelton Harbour - not very exciting, but it was from here that Captain Scott and Shackleton set off for their Antarctic expeditions. Scott on the 'Discovery' in 1901, Shackleton on the 'Nimrod' in 1908 and Scott on the 'Terra Nova' in 1910, from which he didn't return

We couldn’t drive from Lyttelton to Sumner as the road is still closed from rockfall, so we had to go through the tunnel under the Port Hills (undamaged from the earthquake) to the outskirts of Christchurch and along the coast road to Sumner. It is still a lovely place with a great surfing beach, lots of café’s and great views of the surrounding Port Hills, but shockingly, the cliff edge (maybe 200 feet high) partially fell away in the earthquake, taking a number of houses with it and leaving others perched precariously on the edge. 

View from the beach at Sumner

The cliff face is still full of very loose rocks and the feeling is they could give way at any moment. To protect property and people below, row upon row of containers have been placed, two high in an attempt to catch any falling rocks. These are seen all round Sumner and, recently artists have been commissioned to paint them to stop it looking like a container yard! It was very sad to see what obviously were (and to an extent still are) beautiful places scarred like this.

A house perched half over the cliff. The other half is at the bottom!

The surfing beach at Sumner

A surfer finally stands up (briefly!)

Looking down to the estuary, New Brighton and Southshore

We didn’t venture the other side of the estuary to New Brighton and Southshore as it’s a long way through Christchurch and, we understand these formerly picturesque places have been devastated. Built on low, marshy ground, we’re told the ground ‘liquified’ in the earthquake causing many properties to simply sink! Whether they will ever recover I don’t know, but you can see from this picture (albeit showing a layer of smog on a still day) how picturesque the area is and why people built there in the first place. Up until the first earthquake in September 2010, earthquakes were pretty much unheard of in this area, so why not build there? You can't really blame the planners.

New Year, floods and ancient New Zealand history (if you believe it)!

We’re now at the end of our third day into the New Year, although we’d hardly know it as in New Zealand it appears to be a non-event! There was an event with fireworks in Hagley Park, Christchurch attended by about 5000 people that we thought about going to, but the lure of a bottle of wine was too much, so we stayed at home ate paella and watched TV. There were no New Year celebrations on any of the channels we could watch, so we watched ’the best of Graham Norton’, which had a commercial break around midnight and no mention of New Year. We gave up about 12:15 and went to bed! Very strange to think we were in 2013, but the UK wouldn’t be until 1:00pm the following day – and the last countries (Alaska or Hawaii perhaps?), not celebrating until it was about 11:00pm on New Years day for us.

New Years day was warm and sunny and we were chilling out in the garden reading, when Jackie pointed out Pete, our next door neighbour and of fairly advanced years, up on the roof of his workshop doing some repairs. 

Yummi plumb crumble! Thanks Pete!

Jackie suggested I go and see if he wanted a hand, so I spent a very pleasant hour with him on his roof. It felt a bit nostalgic to me, as he reminds me a bit of my dad. Pete’s a woodworker (as was my dad) and his workshop is stuffed full of machines that I can remember at my dad’s works, the smell of wood, the jumble of bits of wood, tools, screws, glue and the whole atmosphere took me right back to those days. We got the job done and, as a reward, he offered me some plums off his tree, so I came back with bags of them and cooked a plum crumble, which we ate with home-made custard for our tea!

Jackie chilling out on the patio, reading

We’ve had some very strange weather here since 30^th December, a big low pressure has been bringing lots of rain to the western side of the Southern Alps, but warm, often sunny, but very windy weather to us in the Canterbury Plains. It was forecast on the day we went to the Rakaia Gorge and had our jet boat ride and walk back; the jet boat owner told us he wouldn’t be there for about a week now as rain was forecast in the west which would bring lots of flood water down this river. He was right (see below)! On the way back we saw the Nor’west cloud arch, which signals North Westerly warm winds, usually bringing rain to the west. In fact it lasted until today, we had occasional rain, often sunshine, high winds but always warm, but on the west they’ve had torrential rain. Apparently they’ve had something like 400mm rain per day that flooded the Milford Track, one of the worlds ‘Great Walks’ and one people have to book up at least 6 months in advance. 

Alpacas - very silly looking sheep!

We heard the path was 1.5m deep in floodwater, with trampers being told to stay put in the huts and await helicopter rescue as soon as conditions improved. It also washed away a bridge on the western road north of the Franz Joseph Glacier, completely cutting off that side of the country and making that road a 300km cul-de-sac. Additionally a landslip in Arthurs Pass also cut off that road. It meant that anyone on that side of the country had a massive detour to make. Not very pleasant, but we haven’t heard of any injuries.

Rains on the mountain tops flood rivers on our side, even though it’s been relatively dry. We heard that the Rakaia gorge bridge was in danger due to high flood waters and people at Rakaia Huts, where the river enters the Pacific and has the ‘gentle lagoon and pebble beach’ Jackie described, were advised to consider evacuating due to high water. We were going to have a look yesterday but decided against it as it was very windy and started to rain, so we left it until today, going over the ‘longest bridge’ over the Rakaia river, into Ashburton (quite a busy metropolis), back through Methven and onto the Rakaia Gorge bridge. The river was amazingly full of a raging torrent of very muddy water. Below are two pictures taken on our two visits to the gorge, but they don’t really convey the atmosphere. The first has a fast flowing, but relatively benign clear blue river, the second shows a much fuller, angrily flowing muddy river with lots of swirling currents, not one you would want to fall into!

Before - clear blue water

After -  muddy, angry water

Next we went back to Rakaia Huts and the nice blue lagoon we saw a few days before. There were two reasons for this, one is to see how flooded it was (yes, the lagoon was a lot fuller of muddy water, but no flooding in the village or campsite), but the other was to do a bit of investigation work on the ancient history of New Zealand!

Our ‘investigation’ work was instigated by a book I’ve just read, ‘1434, the year a magnificent Chinese fleet sailed to Italy and ignited the renaissance’ by Gavin Menzies. I’d picked it up in a second hand bookshop in Hornby and was interested as I’d previously read his first book ‘1421, the year China discovered America’. In his first book he presents evidence (which is quite believable), that the Chinese had a huge armada of up to 1000 large ships (up to 50m wide and 150m long), sailed and mapped the world long before any European and that they produced maps (or charts) that were given to Europeans (to allow them to pay homage to China), that allowed subsequent European ‘discoveries’. He claims that Columbus, Vespuchi, Magellan and Cook all sailed with Chinese maps, so knew exactly where they were going. In his second book he claims a Chinese delegation, led by Zeng He, visited Venice in 1434 and gave maps, knowledge on civil and military engineering, machines and star charts for sea navigation. He claims our great European geniuses and inventors, such as Leonardo Da Vinci and Regiomontanus were merely very good illustrators of Chinese inventions! Bold stuff!

The evidence he submits is quite believable, but he makes such massive leaps of faith that it’s easy to discredit parts, which throws doubt on the whole thing. 

The raised 'fortified' bank (lagoon and Pacific in the distance)

I’ll leave you to read the books if you’re interested in this sort of thing, but our interest in New Zealand concerns research conducted by a Cedric Bell in 2003 that he used in his ‘1434’ book. Menzies claims the eventual cause of China retreating from world domination is the almost total destruction of their fleet following the impact of a comet in the sea off the SE coat of New Zealand that caused a massive tsunami right across the Pacific rim, with a wave about 220m high around New Zealand. The wave, he says, caused the destruction of over 90% of their ships, a situation they never recovered from. 

I don't think Jackie was taking this very seriously!

Apparently evidence of a 20m diameter crater has been found on the sea bed that dates to this time (1440) and Bell claims the Chinese had been settled in New Zealand for many centuries by then (up to 2000 years ago). He produces evidence that they had a city where Christchurch now is, major harbours on the Banks Peninsular at Akaroa and another large settlement at Rakaia Huts! He also claims the boulders on the beach at Moeraki are actually ballast from a Chinese treasure ship and he says, on the beach at Moeraki are the remains of about nine 50m x 150m ships that were smashed into the cliffs by the force of the tsunami. I’ve seen these boulders on a previous visit to NZ 12 years ago and we intend to visit again with Pauline, Jackie’s mum, in February, so I will be keen to look for evidence. Watch this space, I’ll report then!

You can read Cedric Bell’s report on Rakaia Huts (and Moeraki) by following this link:

http://www.gavinmenzies.net/Evidence/43-rakaia-to-ellesmere/ 

and we went to try to see his evidence. The large settlement was apparently situated where a campsite and some housing now stands and you can see on the website a sketch of how he thinks it looked. We wanted to look for the fortified bank, the flat area of the old town, the harbour they built and the 12m wide canal he claims linked the lagoon to Lake Ellesmere. 

The man-made 'harbour capable of taking ocean-going ships?

He claims to have located evidence of wall foundations underground in the campsite using instruments, so of course we couldn’t check these. We could see what he claims is the fortified bank and the flat area in the campsite and could see what he claims was the harbour and canal, but it seems there could be many other explanations for what we saw. 

The flat area and ‘fortified bank’ could, for example, have been formed by a retreating glacier from the last ice age and the ‘harbour’ and ‘canal’ look to us like natural features on a shingle beach. Why, for example, build a canal parallel to the sea when the lagoon and Ellesmere Lake are both open to the sea? Why not use the sea? 

The 12m wide canal? Note the Pacific further to the left

Why build fortifications when the land was uninhabited at the time (pre-maori)? Read the books and look at the evidence and make up your own mind, but at the moment I’m open minded. I’ve no doubt there is something in what he says, but whether it’s quite as he believes is anyone’s guess. 

Another view of the 'fortified' bank and the flat area (now the campsite)

I can remember in the 1970’s a guy called Erich Von Daniken writing a book called ‘Chariots of the Gods’, where he claimed aliens visited the earth long ago. He referred to these old maps, shown in Menzies books, claiming they could only have been drawn from space. Menzies says the distortion is due to the difficulty in determining longitude in those days and, if he corrects for it they are almost perfect! Others disagree. It will be impossible to ever prove, but it’s very interesting!

I’m looking forward to further ‘investigation’!