South Island Trip – April 2013 – Part One

As with most of our significant trips the days leading up to departure are frantic. The pace increasing exponentially until we drive out the gate.
Then, Sue relaxes, and then so can I.

Once we are a couple of kilometers from home the trip can really begin and Sue starts to get excited. Except in this case it does not properly start until we arrived in Blenheim but she is full of smiles before Pokeno.

So to start we take a day to drive to Wellington. Stopping at the usual spots that Sue wont give up, the Church Shop and Café in Cambridge and Replete in Taupo.
We drive through Waikanae about six and stop at a Wood Fired Pizza shop which turns out to be lovely. A very nice women owner/operator who talks about all sorts of things with Sue and has a splendid selection of Pizza combinations.
I grab a couple of Cheesecake slices to take to Jo and Debs and the owner throws in an extra for us to try. These go down really well with some Whiskey at Jo and Debs when we arrive.

We have a day free in Wellington so Sue wants to go to Te Papa. I head off early and meet a client and then pick Sue up Sue Unity Books. At this stage she is still working on the assumption that we have very little spare space in the Land Rover so thankfully does not buy very much.
Truth is we don’t have much space. There are two of us in a Discovery 3 and we have the luggage pod on the roof, which is full. Never have so few travelled with so much!

We do need to save some space for the extra passenger we collect in Blenheim, and it is fair to say that we have most of the back seats free and the luggage cover over the back so the goods are hidden. But still, how did I ever travel on a motor cycle with a back pack!.

Our ferry departs at 8 am so we arrive to check in a 7. This is quite early but the traffic at this time is light and we depart into a wonderful sunrise. Another glorious day in Wellington. I don’t know why people say the weather is bad here?
We arrive into Picton just before lunch. There are a handful of clouds in the sky and a hundred push bikes on the ferry. There is a 100km ride in Blenheim and everyone is coming over for it. I hope the weekend stays like this for them, and for us.

So now we have collected Anna and Jill and soon I will head of to the airport to collect Richard and our group will be all together. Tony Brdige meets us at the hotel and we met up with Don Kelly for some lunch and a quick catch up. Sadly Sally is away and he is busy tonight so they could not met us for dinner. But we six will be together looking forward to the trip and there will be lots of excited chatter I am sure. We are leaving at a gentlemanly 8 am so we can even stay up a little late!