We were scheduled to leave Wellington today, so we got out of bed early (at 8:30), showered packed up our stuff and went to find some breakfast. With stomachs filled, the next order of business was to find our rental car. This went relatively well apart from me mixing up Victoria and Vivian streets, which are both in quite different parts of town, but in my defence, they do start with the same letters. We popped into a ‘Service Station’, so called over here because they actually have people to fill up your car and check the oil. They were very helpful and had a navigation touch screen to help put us back on the right track.
I had ordered a Toyota Corolla, but they replaced that with a Holden Trax, which is a 2WD SUV type of vehicle. It has all the buttons and is quite comfortable to drive. It does beep at us a lot though, I must say, and I’m not always sure what it wants to tell me.
The motorway out of Wellington was about 3 blocks from the apartment where we stayed, so we were very quickly leaving it behind as we headed for the Rimitaka Range, which is one of the 2 main roads out of town. It’s a bit of a windy road, was a bit rainy and very windy, but not cold enough to be icy, thankfully. The Rimitakas are 940 metres at the highest point, so a fair bit of winding road driving was needed. We passed at least a dozen logging trucks heading to Wellington and I must take my hat off to those drivers – I thought it was hard work in my car.
We stopped for coffee in Featherston where the wind continued to howl through.
From Featherston, it was about another 15 minutes into Martinborough, a town of about 1,500 people that is famous for it Pinot Noir wines. It was founded in the 1880′s by John Martin and the street names commonly feature places he had visited. eg. Naples, Venice, Cologne and …. Kansas. There are lots of old cottages and shops that date back to those early days. Most notable is the Martinborough Hotel, which was originally built in 1882. We stayed there in 1999 when the current restoration had just been completed and it has captures it’s time well.
As we’d arrived in town too early to go to our accommodation, we did a bit of a drive around to work out where to have lunch. During our travels we discovered this little church that was not really near anywhere, complete with some sheep doing the ground maintenance.
Poppies Winery was the location for lunch, where they specialise in locally compiled platters that match quite well with their wines. The Pinot Noir was excellent and matched the food well.
Our accommodation here is an old Vicar’s cottage that was relocated in 2001 from Wanganui. It is made from lots of local New Zealand timber and is very comfortable. As a result we had a quite afternoon relaxing while I prepared a home-cooked meal.
Until tomorrow
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