OF1 has an HIA

Thursday 9th February

Musing here overlooking Picton Harbour - the view (below) is probably in joint first place with the Bay of Islands.

We were up with the sparrows this morning to drive to Wellington.  Again, great countryside and very little traffic.  At first we were in vineyard country then as we left Hawkes Bay it was mainly cattle ranching.  A coffee stop in Shannon (I must admit to succumbing to the item 'bacon buttie' on the cafe blackboard - delicious), a change of driver and on the road again, singing along to our favourite 1970s and 1980s songs.  Thanks to L2 for adding us to his Spotify family - my tablet has over 500 OF hits to be Bluetoothed over the car's speakers. Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Eagles, Rod Stewart, Sheena Easton, Kate Bush, Hawkwind, and many, many more.

We arrived at the ferry terminal early to find it was in the city centre!  We strolled up to the Government Building (the oldest wooden structure in the southern hemisphere) and had a coffee surrounded by young office types and hipsters.

The boat was small by cross channel standards with 400 passengers.  Our little Toyota was parked by two massive lorries towing even larger trailers; one filled with pigs and the other with sheep.  This made the car deck quite odouriferous (I have been itching to use that word since it was on a notice in the Taupo motel asking residents not to cook odouriferous food).

It was a lovely 3.5 hour crossing, especially coming into South Island, picking our way through the narrow inlet.  Everyone was very chatty.  First a young French lady, Aurore,  was great fun talking about an eclectic mix of subjects including New Zealand food & cheese  (compared to French), wine, Brexit, her job as a notary and itineraries.  At the end she gave us her name and address and invited us to stay FOC in her B &B in Avignon (of pont fame).  We also chatted to a NZ couple from Wellington who were fonts of information - he worked at GEC in Coventry.

We docked in the small town of Picton and found our accommodation: the Harbour View.  The view is stunning through the full length and width glass sliding doors overlooking the bay.  We decided to have a cup of tea on the deck as the sun sunk in the west.  OF1 had put the cups out and was just returning with the biccies when there was a sickening crash and she reeled backwards and collapsed into a chair. She had missed the open section of the large sliding door and walked straight into the fixed window section!!!  She was taken from the field of play for an HIA.  Currently, she is recovering with her usual medicine (medoc taken orally) and talking nineteen to the dozen, so she is fine.

Tomorrow we are catching a water taxi at eight for a walk along the Queen Charlotte track - the weather forecast is good.  We then go to Steve's for the night so there will be no blog for a couple of days which will be a relief to you all.