Friday of my holiday was the day to fly kites and buggy. The wind Gods co-operated and brought me a nice smooth north-easter. On Friday morning I began exploring the Christchurch coast at Sumner Beach. Although it was small, it looked promising and I made a mental note to return there next time, at dead low tide. By early afternoon the tide was low and I had made my way to New Brighton, a coastal suburb of Christchurch with a wonderful long, wide sand beach. Right in the middle of this beach is a huge pier which looked almost big enough to buggy under, kite and all. I didn't try it, even though a local assured me it had been done before (but he couldn't tell me what length of kite line it was done with!) I kite buggyied with my 6.3m c-quad for most of the afternoon up and down the 8km of beach south of the pier. It was much like Rabbit Island Beach here in Nelson, except for the big piles of kelp seaweed that wash up there. They just made the buggying all the more interesting as I had to work to avoid the great blobs of seaweed at 50kph!
The New Brighton Pier splits the beach in two with several kilometers of kite buggy hevan on either side. In the photo below you can just see the pier in the background.
A couple of local kite surfers were also enjoying the breeze that afternoon. New Brighton Beach really made my holiday. I'm sure I'll return here next summer for another buggy blast.
After I packed up at New Brighton I headed back up the coast to Kekerengu. I spent another night in the housebus with Mark and Pamela before completing the journey home on Saturday, tired but happy.
8:15:00 PM 
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