Grand Tour South X

7.30am we are woken to the bellow of a jet boat taking off. See what I mean? We breakfast and pack the car, heading off in sunshine to our first stop at Geraldine. It’s the end of the holidays for some people so the number of caravans, trailers and boats on the road is high. The cloud moves in and it rains. The Canterbury Plains are boring. The claustrophobia of the roof up and the constant traffic does not help. For the first time on the trip, the small trickle of hot air coming through the heater due to a sticky heater tap, started to make things distinctly stuffy. Open the windows you say, but this causes other problems. The convertible hood gets pressurised when driving which keeps it taut, however wind down the windows too far and the pressure drops turning the roof into a flapping rag and rattling the hood bow against the frame about 4 inches from your ear. The secret is to lower the windows just enough to keep the hood taut and to keep a constant speed.
I’m sure that a bit of research could have found a better route north but after a poor night’s sleep we wanted to get to our rest stop at Woodend in a hurry. It still seemed to take ages to cross the plains, skirt Christchurch and switch the car off in the in-law’s driveway. That night we ate at one of the local restaurants with threadbare red patterned carpet. I asked for the blue cod from the menu. “The blue cod today is terakihi” came the reply. “Well what is the chicken today?” I asked but it went straight over the top.

After a rest day it was time to get into the mountains again, heading north we took Highway 7 towards Hamner Springs, another lovely road climbing into the mountains, with hot sun and clear blue skies. So far the fire warning sign guy had been pretty well redundant throughout the country leaving the big green arrow stuck firmly on “Low”. Passing a sign with a “Medium” arrow was an encouraging sight.
Hamner was bursting at the seams with people and cars, queuing for parks, queuing for cafes, queuing for the toilets. It was too much and too hot, we turned round and headed for the Lewis Pass. The road was much less steep and the crest not as high as Arthur’s Pass and this time instead of rain we had hot sun. The heater was making it’s presence felt even with the roof down so it was a relief to stop at Maruia Springs on the far side of the pass and have lunch in the cool of the restaurant. From the springs onwards the heat was kept at bay by the beech forest stretching high overhead, the canopy almost touching above and casting a lovely dappled light on the road below. The occasional leaf falling through this light looked like flakes of gold as we sped downwards towards Reefton. At Ikamatua we left highway 7 to follow the opposite bank of the Grey River, with the beech forest now behind us we were sweltering but our day’s destination was not too far away, turning right again we found ourselves on the deserted main street of a ghost town and pulled up outside the Blackball Hilton, our stop for the night.
The barman left the two bikies outside with their beers and showed us up the gloomy, creaking staircase to our room for the night. We tossed our luggage on the bed and went for a walk around the town. Blackball isn’t actually a ghost town it has a population of 324, two pubs, a school and a salami factory. There is still a tall chimney on the outskirts near the old coalmine entrance and other evidence of it’s grimy history. Back at the hotel – officially called “Formerly The Blackball Hilton”, the reason explained by a couple of framed letters from Paris Dad’s lawyers, we slaked our thirst and watched the cloud cascading over the nearby hills at sunset before sitting down for some home style West Coast cooking. It was Saturday night, but apart from an English couple and a foursome from Canterbury, we were it. We retreated to our room early as we had a big day ahead.