Feb 20 Porirua to Richmond
It’s long before breakfast and I am stuck in a traffic jam on a wharf. It must be the start of another South Island holiday. The weather was near perfect, however, and the “new” boat, the Kaitaki, looked quite smart from a distance. (The rust only showed up from close to!)
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I embarked without incident and found a reasonably comfortable lounge in
which to hide. The boat is large, with extensive open air viewing areas
and lots of people. The food was just as bad as ever although the coffee
was acceptable. Immediately outside the harbour, we hit a few lumps but
things then settled down and we crossed the Strait without any undue excitement.
I ventured outside for a while to take a few photos, including some of the passengers in the lower class cabins.
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The Sounds were as pretty as ever with small boats, lots of small birds and some very expensive looking houses. I returned indoors as Picton hove into view, anticipating that we would be summoned to our cars. This didn’t happen, however, so I returned outside to take a few more snaps.
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Eventually we were allowed off and I sped up the road towards Blenheim, happily watching the locals overtaking the tourists on blind corners against a constant flow of oncoming traffic. This was all proof of the comments made by the head of the AA a few days ago to the effect that most NZ drivers are hopeless. More by luck than judgment, there were no crashes and I felt the need to steady my nerves with a wine tasting.
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Johanneshof is the first one on the road and I had a quick taste and then emerged with 2 bottles of riesling and 2 of gewurztraminer. There was a superb field of sunflowers in front of the winery buildings.
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Knowing that I will be returning to the area in a couple of weeks, I ignored most of the vineyards before stopping at Wairau River for lunch. The food was good, if expensive, and the garden setting beautiful. There was even a gentle breeze to reduce the impact of the blazing sun. The Vietnamese chicken and prawn salad was excellent, with lots of fresh herbs and very intense flavours.
The hills along the Kaituna Valley were brown and there were irrigation systems running full blast in many of the fields. Given the strength of the sun, this didn’t seem to be a very sustainable use of water but I’m a foreigner and don’t fully understand the concept of clean green New Zealand.
The Pelorous Sound was sparkling and Havelock looked busy. My plan had been to stop at the Pelorous Bridge café for coffee but there were 3 coaches and loads of camper vans in the car park so I beat a hasty retreat and drove on to Rai Valley.
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The village is non-descript but functional, with a general store, a fire station, a café, a petrol station and a gift shop. Its main fame relates to Rai Valley bacon, although that is actually made in Stoke, the far side of Nelson.
The café food didn’t look exciting so I settled for an ice cream. NZ eats more ice cream per head than any other country. I suspect that the locals don’t eat more ice creams than anyone else, it’s just that the ones they do eat are huge – even the supposed small ones. Unfortunately, I couldn’t solve the logistics of making an ice cream cone stand upright whilst taking a photo of it, so I just concentrated on eating it before it melted.
After Rai Valley, the road crosses a couple of low passes before reaching the sea just outside Nelson. As I arrived at the start of the evening rush, I avoided the city centre and followed the ring road to Richmond. I located the motel without any problem and settled in.
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I had a brief wander into the town to check out the restaurants and to take some photos of the church, one of several fine ones in the area. It was still hot and sunny and not the weather for doing anything too strenuous. Feeling the effects of the early morning, I returned to the motel for a rest, spent a fortune on the phone downloading spam and watched the cricket on TV. Once I had decided (erroneously as it turned out) that we were going to lose, I went out to eat.
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Holy Trinity, Richmond |
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Appelmans is in an old style building, where I had eaten before when it was under different ownership. I had also eaten at Appelmans when it was in a different building 25 k away in Nelson. All very confusing. What wasn’t confusing was the quality of the food. The scallop and new potato salad was exquisite. If only I had a small camera with a fast lens suited to taking surreptitious photos in smart restaurants. The accompanying glass of Framingham’s classic riesling was also good and very cheap. The masses have still not realised that riesling is one of the great wines. Long may that last and the prices remain low. The main course of spinach ravioli on a lump of salmon on a spicy potato cake on a bed of spinach was also memorable. Walking back to the motel took quite a lot of effort.