Riccarton Bush

In the heart of Christchurch is a wild forest, home to over 400 mighty kahikatea trees. There’s also the oldest remaining building in Canterbury

We went to explore Riccarton Bush one evening while in Christchurch for Meikas 7th Birthday, it was a prefect wee short walk to burn off some lingering energy for the day.
Walking in and strolling past the big beautiful Riccarton House, a grand Victorian/Edwardian homestead built in three stages – 1856, 1874 and 1900 – for Canterbury’s pioneering Deans family. The house is fully restored and is decorated and furnished in appropriate period style. It was pretty cool, I absolutely love old heritage houses and would love to go have a look inside one day, unfortunately it was closed when we visited.
We also had an explore inside Deans Cottage, the oldest building in Canterbury, the kids found it hard to believe that is what people used to live in – might keep them a big more humble about their own home now.

Then it was off through the predator fence to go explore inside Riccarton Bush.
One thing that struck me straight away was how cool it was to have this right in the heart of Christchurch, all the beautiful native bush among the city was pretty cool.
As we walked about the well build board walk and paths we also noticed heaps of really neat informative displays around. There were some neat feather shaped metal cutouts with information panels in the middle, these were really cool and a neat way to catch your eye.

We carried on around checking out the big trees and found the Kiwi Guardian Post.
We then carried on back out again, the whole walk did not take long 15min return. Its an easy stroll in the middle of the city making it pretty cool.
You could take prams most of the way around with a few rough bits that would not take much. This was a pretty cool walk worth doing and a easy way to spend 30min burning off some steam