We have been keeping ourselves busy with many walks in the foothills and enjoying the native bush. Mostly around Mount Hutt (which is where the skiing is when the snow starts) and Mount Alford. The walking is in two types, one very much like the UK the other very different to the UK. It is either very easy on the flat in industrial farming landscape. A bit like Norfolk or the Fens if the hedges were made from Eucalyptus (aka Gum tree), Laylandii (gone bananas) or Pampas Grass (which makes a lovely rustling sound in the wind). Or its up steep hillsides in the trees. We like the uphill walking in the trees. The walking here is much more tricky than in the UK, and a lot more interesting with many points where you could literally fall of the side. The paths are narrow, steep, often with trees tangling their roots across the way. You don’t meet another soul as you scrabble up slopes. Most start of scrabbling through the woods of cool, dense, almost monochrome Southern Black Beech. Their white tree trunks covered with a felt of black fungus. Occasional damp parts are rich in lush green ferns. All around is the sound of birds calling around you. Jack took this little clip of footage at Mount Alford.



You can hear the birds songs. We have yet to identify them (possibly Riflemen or Tom Tits or both). As you climb up a little higher the trees change, sparser and smaller with thin grasses, the colours become more silvery and pale green and then a little higher when your lungs are thumping and your legs are burning you clear the tree line and you are in the scrub (coasrs grasses and the very spikey New Zealand flax and its suddenly frosty in the parts where the sun has’t yet reached. A little higher still and you can see over the tree tops across the Canterbury Plain, as flat as an ironed out sheet, across to the Pacific Ocean. Awsome.