John last visited the UK over forty years ago, though you would not have guessed this from his accent, which was quintessentially English. As far as we could remember, we had not met before. John has keen interest in his UK roots however and it did not take long before we had found common ground in our family history. He has built up an extensive collection of family photographs and correspondence, including pictures of my parents and sister that I have never seen before. In exchange we provided some photos taken at my Mum's 90th birhtday party and promised to do better when we returned to the UK.
John had spent much of his working life in the hotel and restaurant business and was a impeccable host, producing food and wine for us at regular intervals thoughout the day.
We were back at John's the following morning to be taken on a whistle-stop tour of some of the vineyards, wineries and farms. We also visited the start of the Abel-Tasman Trail and half regretted that we had decided not to walk it.
The Nelson area is renowned for its favourable climate (the weather was certainly beautiful that day) and it is the most lush part of NZ that we have seen so far. The vineyards particularly have an almost picture-book quality and immense care seems to be taken in both the nurturing of the crop and maintaining its appearance. The number of vineyards and the variety of wines produced, made any sort of systematic tasting impossible but we sampled a few and bought a good bottle of Neudorf Pinot Gris for a special occasion - I am hoping that this will be my birthday!
We had discovered the previous day that John is also a keen collector of local pottery (Nelson seems to have been something of a centre for this), which he keeps, catalogued according to maker, in storage cupboards.
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| John with a small part of his pottery collection |
Our tour included some bargain hunting in various charity shops and a 'recycling centre'. The latter is a place where anything unwanted but not worthless, can be bought for resale at a nominal price. Its a bit like a charity shop I suppose but included bulkier stuff like building materials,wash basins, bikes and garden tools as well. John found several items to add to his collection.
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| John and Ian at the recycling centre |
Maggie was concerned that I would identify some rare part for our old Saab - like a back axle for instance - but I settled for a couple of trashy books. I had been trying to read Madame Bovary in French but had been finding progress painfully slow.
John had warned us that the coast road from Nelson to Picton was twisty but this hardly prepared us for the final 10 km, which was probably as twisty as any I have come across. There were frequent big drops and crumbling verges as well, and the occasional section of white wooden fence offered only psychological protection. Great!
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| Maggie and the amazing Toyota on the road to Picton |
After a bit of scratching around we found a campsite in Picton and negotiated a reasonable deal to leave the car and tent there while we were away on the Queen Charlotte Trail. It was getting quite late in the evening and we were pleased to find a small supermarket open to buy enough food to make lunches for three days and four people.
A feature of the campsite was that the railway line to Picton approached it on a viaduct before descending quite steeply and running within about 50m of our tent. Big freight trains with two diesel units ran periodically through the night. If anyone with a morbid imagination has wondered what the last thing they would hear if a Boeing 747 crashed into their house, I can provide details.
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