Milford Sound

Milford Sound was described in the Rough Guide we've been relying on for our trip as 'obscenely beautiful'. And, once again, it wasn't wrong. We drove through woods and forest areas as we started our journey from Te Anau, but these soon fell away to reveal the high mountains with vertical drops, waterfalls, tarns, hanging valleys, cirques, arretes and other words you might recall being associated with glaciers from GCSE Geography. The last hour of the drive was breathtaking, and then we got to the Sound itself to take a cruise between the steep rocks the glaciers had formed all those years ago.

Milford Sound is incorrectly named, it turns out. It is actually a fiord (or should that be fjord (you'll have to imagine the o with a line through it, not sure where to find that particular symbol)?!). Fiords are formed by glacial erosion, sounds are formed by river erosion. It was discovered by a Welshman from Milford Haven who gave the name of his town to the area. It was fortunate then that he didn't come from Merthyr Tydfil. He got the opportunity to name it because Captain Cook didn't spot mile after mile of 90m high drops into the sea when he sailed past. The cruise took us out onto the open sea and it was amazing to see how easy the Sound was to miss from there.

After cruising round for a couple of hours, we went back to climb up the Key Summit a few kilometres down the road. From there the tarn called Lake Marian was more obvious, sitting proudly atop a hanging valley.