Heading inland the road follows the Buller River through to Murchison. On the way we stopped at the Buller Gorge Swing-bridge, the longest swing-bridge in New Zealand. We didn’t fancy paying to walk across, there’s nothing on the other side anyway. We fancied the ‘flying fox’ (strapped to a wire and slide hands-free) back across the river even less, but we watched a couple of other foolish types do it.

After Murchison the road goes along the edge of the Kahurangi National Park up to Nelson. We stopped to take in the views over the Tasman Bay above Nelson before driving down into the town. There we had a bite to eat at Ziggy’s Vegetarian Cafe and a look round some of the shops. First stop was the jewellers who made the rings for the Lord of the Rings films. You can buy replicas there, starting at about NZ$180 for silver, NZ$550 for 9ct gold up to over NZ$3500 for platinum. They also had some nice rings with coloured resin blocks set into them but we left empty-handed. Next door was FlameDaisy, a glassware studio which had some spectacular pieces of glass on display, some of which echoed the NZ landscape with mountain scenes, sea and sky.

The rest of Nelson didn’t prove to be terribly exciting so we decided to only spend one night there, before moving on the next day.