The centre of New Zealand

First thing in the morning we were up and out, taking the 8:30 bus into the centre of Nelson. Armed with our trusty tourist map we immediately got lost, but we did see quite a bit of the city that way. And what a nice city it is. The streets are wide and clean, there’s a good mix of old and new buildings, and we had the best blueberry muffin ever at Yaza on Hardy Street. Getting back on track, we found Trafalgar Street and went to explore the reason why little Nelson is a city – Christ Church Cathedral. There are a lot of steps to get up to the cathedral, but it is worth it, both for the view and to look around.

Next on the agenda was to travel to the centre of New Zealand, which just happens to be on top of a hill. There is good signposting to the start of the track, but when you get there you find two tracks going in opposite directions and no signposts. We saw some people coming down from the left-hand one so I asked if they’d just come from the centre of New Zealand. In a broad American accent the guy said “Yes, but it doesn’t matter which track you take as long as it’s going up”.

So up we went. The track zig-zags up the hill, sometimes quite steep and other times steeper. Every now and then you emerge from the shrubbery to increasingly panoramic views of Nelson and the surrounding area. We finally made the top, where there’s a concrete and steel marker. There is also a magnificent vista – and a photo telling you what you’re looking at.

After that, the only way is down. There are two paths, neither of them marked, so we decided to be adventurous and take the other one. This was very narrow and had a sheer drop on the left for the first 30 metres or so. Then it joined up with the path we’d walked up. Determined not to go back the same way, we got out our map at the next junction to see where Maitai Valley is. Someone immediately stopped and asked if we needed help – this happens a lot in NZ! She told us where the Maitai track comes out, so off we went. And at the next junction found ourselves on the original track. We persevered and did eventually get to Maitai Road, from where we walked back to the cathedral.

By now we’d overdosed on spectacular views, so we grabbed a 2 bus to Annesbrook to visit the World of Wearable Art and Classic Cars Museum – yes, it really is a thing. There’s an annual Wearable Art show in Wellington, and the museum displays past entries from the show. Describing some of them as either wearable or art is stretching a point, but there were some very clever designs.

The classic car part is in two large building that were previously used to manufacture Triumph and then Honda cars. The cars date from 1908 to the 70s, with the odd new one thrown in for good measure, and they’ve been meticulously restored to their former glory.