There are a few different routes through Lyttelton to reach the Canterbury port’s famous timeball tower, but whichever you take make sure you’re there by 1pm. At the exact stroke of the hour, the great zinc-coated sphere will plummet with a whoosh from the top of the mast, a ritual that was enacted every day from 1876 to 1934 and more intermittently thereafter until the Canterbury earthquakes collapsed the tower and its three-storey station.