Hanmer Springs

Hanmer Springs is a favourite place of mine so I was determined that we would visit here again. Although a visit to the hot springs was on my list of “to do’s”, we decided against it as the days we spent here were rather warm. The nights were cool though which was actually quite pleasant. The other reasons for re-visiting Hanmer were the scenery and ambience of the town, and for the activities.

We replenished a few of the groceries, and revisited the hot bread shop that Bruce had fond memories of from our last visit. They had possibly changed owners or bakers though, as the memories did not live up to the present day reality.

Bruce spent a bit of time fiddling with the gas jet of the fridge, and talking to the agent for the fridge (based in Christchurch). My clever husband managed to get it all going again thankfully, and the temperature in the fridge gradually fell to the required 4 degrees. The technician in Christchurch was somewhat alarmed though that Bruce had cleared the jet with a bit of fine wire, saying it would make the burner run hotter than it was supposed to, but so far all looks good, and we will get the unit checked over in Christchurch when we are there.

In the meantime the dogs enjoyed a walk down by the Waiau River, which is the main river flowing through Hanmer.

The next morning we headed for a walk labelled the Forest Amble. Here there is a wooded park dotted with various wooden sculptures. Oscar and Hunter were both particularly taken with the possum sculpture. They were very excited until Bruce lifted them up so they could see that it was actually wood – not a real animal.

Oscar was particularly interested in the Ogre

The rats and eagle were pretty cool too

We also saw carved wooden mushrooms but missed the fantail that was supposed to be here somewhere. Across the other side of the road was the Woodland Walk that we also did some of. Here there were examples of all the European varieties of alpine trees – larches, firs, cedars, birches and so on. It was really a lovely shady place to walk on a hot day.

The next day we decided to do the Conical Hill walkway, this time without the dogs as we were not sure that Oscar, in particular, would handle it. This walkway zigzags up to a summit 550m above sea level, where there were to be panoramic views over the area. I was afraid it was going to be hot work, seeing as we did not start the walk until around 11am, but was pleasantly suprised that almost all of the track was again through wooded areas. It was a bit of a workout, but not too bad and well worth doing.

Note the property with the back yard filled with water tanks! Pity the neighbours.

We felt that the effort deserved a gelato after wards,  and although we were tempted to stay another night, we pushed on to Waipara.