EC-Rider Travels

Another beautiful day and Susie took us on the most stunning drive over to her youngest son, Beau’s farm. Indescribably beautiful with Shield property as far as you could see. From the top we could see where Sam and Henry farmed. The rolling landscape is so very different from Chid’s farm, just a few hours north, with its rugged mountains, covered in trees. The farming is more intensive here with a focus on meat production and thus a certain amount of drilled land to feed the stock. Chid’s stock had to be self-sufficient with no extra food or water, his emphasis being on wool production from his Marino sheep (for Icebreaker), plus his diversification into Manuka honey.

We dropped in to see Beau and Annabel in the lovely house they have recently renovated and Annabel’s beautiful garden full of roses, we then drove along the valley where we bumped into Sam (but sadly not his wife Alice) and finally on to Henry and Pip the parents of the ballerinas. The boys were all hard at work weaning the lambs and weighing the sheep. A relentless task looking after this number of animals with remarkably little help. It was very impressive.

We said a sad farewell to Susie and Paul after lunch and headed south again, for about an hour and a half, to Christchurch. Again along immaculate roads (just the one) until we started to enter the city, though you would not have known it, the traffic barely slowed down and all of the sudden we were in the centre of Christchurch. Full of neat little one or two storey houses (many of them now brick) set on wide, often tree-lined streets, the odd shopping street, but nothing screaming city or ‘down-town’. I dropped mum with her friends Julian and Rosie Holderness who live in a lovely little house, in a quiet street in the very centre of town, Again it is like a tardis, looking so small from the outside but inside was full of space with a lovely garden. I then headed off right across to the other side of Christchurch to a suburb called Halswell where Philip and Fenella Aldridge live in the most gorgeous house ….. down a drive, passed some sheep, in the middle of a field with a lake and river running through. It is completely stunning and unsurprisingly has just been photographed by House and Garden. They moved here under two years ago and have made it more lovely than words can say. The most exciting thing was going upstairs to bed, I don’t feel I have done that for some time! It has been so lovely to see Philip, and to finally meet Fenella – we had a great evening and I am so happy to be in my very comfy bedroom for a few nights.