Dateline: Saturday 16th March: A Sunny Day in Christchurch - Introduction

I awoke after 12 hours of rest to clear blue skies and bright sunshine.  My aim today was to ride the Heritage City Tram and get my bearings, visit the new City Library and the Botanical Gardens in Hagley Park.  I achieved all three objectives but with the added bonus, courtesy of a miscalculation of the tram timetable, of being able to visit a Woodcraft Centre set up in some converted sea containers, a short distance from both the Botanical Gardens and the Art Gallery.

In this Post I will introduce Christchurch and then in a couple of shorter posts explain an interesting coincidence between a feature in the Gardens and a book that, quite by chance, I bought for enjoyment on this trip.

Christchurch is a city still emerging after the devastating Earthquake of 22^nd February 2011. The quake occurred shortly after 1.00pm on that Tuesday afternoon and measured 6.1 on the Richter Scale at a relatively shallow level to the East of the city in Lylleton Harbour, an extinct volcano in which Christchurch sits. The damage was more severe because of the of the nature of the underlying strata of sand and silt, combined with a high-water table.  I learnt today that if you stand in Cathedral Square the ground is one metre below sea level.  The quake forced the water into the upper layers of sand and silt, turning the ground to a very wobbly jelly. Over 7000 homes to the west of the city were demolished and 60 per cent of the city centre was also destroyed.

Today the city is a mixture of old and new buildings with many areas still to be cleared of debris and some buildings still to be carefully demolished.  It's clear, however, that the best of the old has been preserved and conserved and now sits alongside new buildings such as the impressive City Library - the Turanga.  The renovation of the Cathedral will take another 4 years to complete but the Temporary Transitional Cathedral designed by the Japanese Architect Shigeru Ban opened in 2013 and has become a symbol of hope and community for the city. It can seat 700 in a steel ad timber clad structure supported by 90 reinforced cardboard tubes. It's expected to last 50 years and has some impressive stained glass over its entrance.

Christchurch is described as the most English city outside of the UK and the Lonely Planet Guide lists it as in the Top Ten cities in the world for Street Art. It's also a very green city with over 1200 greenspaces.