Ashburton Domain – Day 207

So here’s the deal. We’re meant to be doing 365 Days doing 365 activities and I think for the first time maybe the second time or the third time in this trip we have hit a wall. We don’t know what to do today. We’re meant to be going from Geraldine to Methven and somewhere in between we are gonna try and find an activity but we’ve done all the good activities so far…

Today on our drive from Geraldine to Methven our lunch stop is gonna be the beautiful Ashburton Domain.

The gardens are like completely peaceful we haven’t seen a single soul. If anything we see more birds.

Today is one of those rare days where failed to find us an activity so you are not going to see our little activity country at the bottom we are just going to show you our awesome pitstop the Ashburton Domain while we are driving toward the little township of Methven where more adventures await.

Although the Ashburton Domain doesn’t count as an official activity for us it’s still pretty awesome, there’s so much to see here between the huge duck ponds there’s a fitness trail, bushwalks, little waterfalls and more sports fields than you can shake a stick at.

One of the first things that we’re checking out is this duck pond which is surrounded by these beautiful dropping willow trees that are reflecting in the water and there’s actually so many ducks here and other species of bird as well so we’re just having a relaxing stroll alongside the pond and watching all these wildlife.

We’re super pleased to have found this little pitstop which is only about an hour away from Christchurch and it’s situated on one of the main highways through New Zealand which is State Highway 1 and it’s just a perfect example of the New Zealand city parks which have always got a lot of effort put into them there’s usually so much to see and you could literally spend a whole day here.

Everywhere you go in New Zealand even in the middle of the city centre like right here in Ashburton birdlife is always super abundant. new Zealand is literally filled with birds.

After checking out the multiple duck ponds we are moving along in the garden and we are stumbling into a beautiful flower garden.

Bees and other insects are going crazy for the wealth of variety of flowers that there is right here between roses and camellias. there is tonne of beautiful and super colourful flowers. But the goal of our pitstop right here in the Ashburton Domain is to find ourselves a great picnic spot so we are still moving along trying to find ourselves the best place to grab a bite. We’re passing in front of beautiful flowers absolutely gigantic trees I mean look at that one it’s taller than most of the buildings in the entire country and we’re also making our way through a lot of little areas which have little signs that tell us what the trees are.

But finally we are stumbling upon a quaint little bridge in front of another duck pond and it looks like the perfect spot for us.

So it’s decided this bench is gonna be our lunch stop for this afternoon right in front of this quaint little duck pond which actually has more ducks than the lake around the corner. Do these ducks not know about that lake?

Anyway, after lunch we are moving on because there’s actually more to explore in this absolutely huge Ashburton Domain. There’s 37 hectares to explore beyond all the streams an buchwalks we find ourselves a little waterwheel along the way as well and of course more beautiful flower gardens.

But we soon get distracted by a trial that leads into the bush that looks pretty cool and in here is a fitness track which we have to try out.

One, two… What?

It hurts.

Yeah, so we are travel writers, not athletes and that’s pretty obvious.

But the trail itself is pretty cool it goes through really thick dense native bush and it’s pretty incredible to believe we are right in the middle of the Ashburton city it feels that we are back in the New Zealand wilderness.

The next section that we find in the Ashburton Domain is the pine tree exotic exhibitions so there is all the exotic pine trees that you can find here and they are all marked with a little sign. Turns out that there are really a lot of things to see and do in the Ashburton Domain we could almost have done an activity here.

So to wrap up our trip on the Ashburton Domain we are seeing more ponds, with now seagulls I think they have chased the ducks and we are seeing a cricket game and this is a really favourite pastime here in New Zealand and Kiwis are crazy about cricket.

We quickly hop back into our van and start making our way to the little township of Methven where we’re gonna be taking the next few days exploring the area and finding hopefully more activities.

Robin has been struggling with this one for a couple of days now but we really need to think outside the box to come up with today…. to come up with today’s activity. And we think so far outside the box we can’t even see the box anymore the box is a dot to us as Joey would say I think it was a different phrase he used… that was a bad one. So we’ve thought so far outside the box that the box doesn’t exist anymore. Scratch everything about boxes. I tired to think so far outside the box to think of a so far outside the box joke that the box is just flattened and put into the recycling bin. How far can I go with this one? This joke is more fun than the activity we did today.

Please stop.