11th February 2010 evening.

Decided to go out for tea by the sea-side, drove out to New Brighton. Didn't take long to get there even though we were stuck in rush hour traffic for a few minutes at some road works. There didn't seem to be a town centre where we had arrived so we turned south and headed down the road parallel to the beach. There were plenty of places to park with access to the shore but we needed somewhere to eat as well, so we kept driving back towards the city. Then we saw the pier. It is magnificent.

Its a new pier built to replace one that was demolished around 30 years ago. The townspeople had donated to a fund and saved up $2 million with the help of a lottery grant of $286,000 and Christchurch council had matched this with a further $2 million and the pier was completed in 2002. However the appeal went on and a few years later lighting was installed. The donors are commemorated along the length of the pier, and it is long! 300 metres of pleasurable walking, and the sea is only 2m deep at the very end. What a superb resort for families, with a marvellous soft fine sandy beach. What a pity the town does not live up to the shore. It was run down with not a lot of places to eat. There were only two restaurants one a pizza place and a curry house. I didn't want pizza again and Mum doesn't like spicy food. We ended up with take away, curry for me, pizza for them and took it back to the motel.