Wine Heaven

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Day 104-107
18th-21st December

With no showers or even toilets at this campsite we got back on the road soon after we woke up. The plan was to get to Wellington, find a decent campsite and get ready for our ferry the next day. The sun was coming out and when we got to Wellington it was a beautiful day. We couldn’t find a camping area in central Wellington so we found one not far from the ferry port. Everything had got quite damp from all the rain the previous day so we decided to take advantage of the warm sunshine and drag all the mattresses and sheets outside to air. Ellory had a nap while I cleaned out the van and got everything back in order. That done we did some stuff on the internet then went into central Wellington for the evening, the movie Tron had just come out and we decided we’d like to see it. We stopped for pizza at Hell’s Pizza, a company that our friend Jena works for back in London and who do very tasty pizzas, we thought of you Jena! We then headed to the cinema and watched Tron. Our opinion is, it looks very pretty, the special effects were really cool, but the story was kinda weak! However we had a good evening and we returned to the campsite to grab as much sleep as we could before our early morning ferry the next day.

Our ferry was at 8.30am and as we had to arrive early for check in, it was an early start! I hadn’t been able to print out our tickets and was worrying a bit, it wasn’t a problem, I just told them our booking number and everything was cool. We drove the van onto the ferry, parked up and went up to restaurant to get some breakfast as we were both starving. Two lots of beans on toast later we decided to find somewhere where we could hang out for the crossing, it’s a pretty long one, just over 3 hours so we wanted to have somewhere to sit! Eventually we found a seat in the bar (of course) and Ellory settled down with his book. I was amazed to find out that there was wi-fi on the ferry and decided to buy some internet time so I could look into booking some things for the South Island. I got some emails done and managed to book Swimming with Dolphins in Kaikoura on the 8th January so I was pretty happy. As we approached the South Island we decided to go up on deck to get our first glimpse of it. It’s pretty dramatic coastline! It was also extremely windy and we only stayed up there long enough to take some pictures before retreating to the safety of the bar.

Eventually the call came for us to return to our cars. I’m glad we’d decided to take our van to the South Island instead of dropping it off in North Island and then flying. It was pretty cheap and it was definitely much nicer than being trapped in a metal box. We’ve been doing too much of that recently!

The weather was completely appalling when we arrived at Picton on South Island (think we were cursed!) so instead of driving any long distances we decided to go as far as Blenheim. There is a very good reason for this, as Blenheim is part of Marlborough country, which you may have heard of. They make a serious amount of wine for New Zealand! As enthusiastic wine drinkers we felt it would be rude not to sample some of the products of this part of the world. Blenheim has approximately 60 vineyards within 10km of Blenheim so we had plenty to choose from! We had a look at the wine map at the side of the road and decided to head first to Cloudy Bay, as it was one of the only ones we’d heard of! Works for me. To our delight when we got there, we found out the tastings were free! We also could try up to 5 wines each, yay! As luck would have it, they had a list of 10 wines we could try so we got to sample them all! They were all very tasty and we decided to buy a bottle of very nice sparkling wine for Simon’s mother, Gay, as she had very kindly invited us to spend Christmas with them.

We were a little peckish after this and decided our next stop would be somewhere that had a restaurant. We had a look at the guide and decided on a vineyard called Saint Clair, this turned out to be a stella move on our part. As we were planning to eat there, our tasting was free while we waited for a table to become available. We then proceeded to find the most delicious wine, Saint Clair Reserve Pinot Gris. It wasn’t the cheapest (damn our expensive taste!) but we decided to treat ourselves to 3 bottles. Then we had the most delicious lunch which we washed down with another glass of Pinot Gris (not the Reserve though). After our most civilised afternoon we decided to stay the night in the ‘Top 10’ Blenheim campsite which was only a couple of kilometres away.

As it was still pouring it down, once we had parked up the van, we hung out in the back of the van for a bit, reading and having some internet time. Both of us nodded off for a bit and when we woke up it was early evening and the rain had stopped, woo! I went down to the shop to get us some sandwich supplies and we had sandwiches outside and were joined by the resident cat who was very friendly, especially after she got some tuna! All in all, not a bad day!

Our plan for the next two days was to drive to a town called Barrytown. We had picked up a leaflet in Auckland about this town on the West coast where you could make your own knife! We thought this sounded like fun and it was definitely something we would never do in England so we wanted to go and check it out. This involved a 4 hour drive across the top of the South Island and down the West coast and we decided to drive via Nelson as I had seen an advert for a handmade glass shop. My parents had bought an entire set of beautiful glassware many years ago on a trip to Venice and I really liked the idea of buying a set of wineglasses or something that we could use when back in England. The company was called Hoglund Art Glass, and if you get the chance, check out their website. Their stuff was completely and utterly beautiful, lots of colour and beautiful patterns. Both Ellory and I fell in love with several vases and a huge platter, until we checked out the prices. For example, the vases we liked were around $600 each. The platter was a whopping $4000, ouch! Sadly waaay beyond our budget for the moment but we noticed they ship anywhere overseas so we took a business card and promised each other that when we were back and earning money in the U.K we would consider investing in a piece from them, we loved them so much.

It took us a few hours to complete the drive to Westport and when we got there and settled into a campsite, we gave the Knife Makers a call to try and book in for the next day. Ah, no availability until New Year? Dammit. Well that had scuppered our plans a bit and we spent a bit of time rearranging stuff to see if we could be back in Barrytown after New Year. We worked out we could manage it so called them back to book in for the 6th January. When we’d been in South America it had been low season and we’d totally forgotten it was now high season in New Zealand and we’d need to book things in advance! So we were now on the West Coast with nothing planned for the next day.

So what did we do the next day? Sweet nothing, that’s what! The sun had come out again and we thoroughly enjoyed hanging out in the sunshine, we also decided to crack open a bottle of the Pinot Gris Reserve that we had bought from Saint Clair and that went down very nicely! This campervan lifestyle is not so bad you know.

Love Liz xxx

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