F and K's Travel Notes: Picton

The Interislander from Wellington approaching Picton.

We left Wellington on a beautiful afternoon. The sky was clear enough to make the ocean blue, but there were enough clouds to make the sky interesting. We boarded the Interislander ferry at 1pm for a 2 pm sailing. The harbour was filled with sailboats enjoying the fair winds. It was a pleasant crossing. As we cruised up the Queen Charlotte Sound towards Picton on the South Island, Fran and I remarked how similar it seemed to the Vancouver to Victoria crossing. The islands dotting the sound were like the gulf islands - even the ferry seemed familiar and could well have been made by the same company as made the BC Ferries.

Picton is a lovely little town at the head of a bay forming a natural harbour at the end of the sound. We found our new digs easily, a three bedroom house overlooking the marina and the harbour. We arrived ahead of Charles and Linda who had crossed two days earlier so they could hike part of the Queen Charlotte Track. Fran and I quickly unpacked and took a glass of wine onto the terrace overlooking the town. It was wonderful. The Australians have a term for people like us - grey nomads. How apt it seems. We had taken the hustle of Wellington and exchanged it for the sound of the cicadas.

A "grey nomad"enjoying the view from our terrace.

Two 'grey nomads' enjoying morning coffee.

The next day was one of the few that we had planned before we left Canada, attending the Marlborough Wine Festival in Blenheim. The festival was featured in a number of travel guides and we arranged our arrival in Picton to coincide with it. Saturday we were up early and on the road. We arrived in Blenheim looking for signs to the festival. We saw none. The young woman at the information centre in town gave us directions, “Go to the next roundabout and follow the signs”, but she had no tickets left so we would have to get some at the gate. No where during our planning had any of us seen any mention of tickets. The next roundabout had no signs. It’s a big festival with attendance averaging 8000. There have to be signs. Between the map, a compass and our GPS we decided to head out towards where we thought the festival should be. Surely we would find some signs. After half an hour we stopped and asked directions. We were travelling in the wrong direction. Twenty minutes later - in the right direction - we saw a sign. It was white with pale gold lettering and it was a towering 2 feet tall. Just over 2 km down the road were saw a line of traffic. Terrific - we have arrived - the day is saved. We crawled along behind the traffic until we reached the gate. Charles, ever the ambassador, exclaimed that we were from Canada and we had planned this visit nearly a year ago and that we were great fans of New Zealand wine and could we have 4 tickets please. How lovely that we were from Canada and how nice that we loved New Zealand wine and how special it was to know that the festival is known abroad, but there are no same day ticket sales. No amount of ambassadorial charm could get us past the gate. We thought even Larry could not have cracked this one. Dejected, but not beaten, we decided to plan our own winery tour. We got out the map and planned the route. At our first stop we were told that all of the wineries were closed to the public this day because all of the staff were at the wine festival.
There was nothing left to do except go for coffee. By the time we reached a café, we had convinced ourselves that we didn’t want to go to the festival anyway. The tickets were $50 dollars each and we had all been to the Niagara Wine Festival and how different could it be anyway? As we waited for our flat whites to be prepared Linda told the barista our tale of woe. “Oh, she said, they have tickets at the community centre office in town. It closes in 10 minutes but I can call and have them stay open until you get there.”
Back to the car, into town, buy the tickets for $100 a couple - after all it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, back to the festival grounds, we know the way by now, and up to the gate. There is no line up. It’s two oclock and the gates opened at ten. We parked the car, for five dollars, showed our tickets and went in to find eight thousand young people drunk and staggering around to a number of bands playing rap music badly and very loudly. They lurched from booth to booth paying up to 6 dollars for a ‘taste’ of wine. The most popular food seemed to be a lamb shank - a large chunk of greasy lamb still on the bone that one gnaws down to the bone. Well over half of the attendees were scantily clad, drunk young women. Charles and Ken thought since we came all this way, we should probably stay for a little while. Fran and Linda thought otherwise and somehow Charles and Ken were outvoted.
We finished the day on our deck, overlooking the harbour and drinking a nice Australian wine.

Vineyards - Marlborough

It's like Niagara, only hills instead of the lake

We wiled away the next two days with walks over the Victoria Domain, strolling through the village, sitting at our favourite café watching the sail boats come and go, selecting which fresh fish we wanted for supper and just enjoying the views from our deck. We were reluctant to leave.