Saved by the wine

26th March 2011, Picton

Today began rainy and continued rainy, so I’m glad we decided to arrange our trek on the Queen Charlotte Track for a couple of days time to give the weather chance to clear. Who am I kidding. We’ll see.

Anyway, we decided to spend today visiting the Saturday market in Nelson and then wine-tasting in the Marlborough wineries. Well, I can report that the guidebook talks up the Nelson market a bit much and it wasn’t really worth the drive. It was a nice enough farmer’s market if you happened to already be staying there. Perhaps splendid markets in Ludlow, Barnes and Bath have spoiled us. Nelson itself is no looker, although surrounded by mountains and water (neither very visible in the murky weather).

We bought a rucksack as well, a small one. We’ve had an ongoing “discussion” about bags for a while, re: what to have along with our two main rucksacks and for day use. I’ve preferred just a sturdy canvas bag because: (a) with big rucksacks on, you just want something to carry by your side for handy stuff, (b) for day use it’s non-descript and always in sight, i.e. not on your back, (c) it can fold away if we wanted to pack it. Maureen wants a small rucksack because (a) for day use it’s much handier than a canvas bag, i.e. it goes on your back, (b) it has pockets, so you don’t have to rummage for small things at the bottom, (c) with big rucksacks on it can be worn on the chest or carried by the side. Today Maureen wins and we’ll send the canvas bag home in our next package and use the grass green rucksack we’ve bought instead.

Back to our rainy day. Not only was the market so-so, it also turned out that Nelson takes a bit longer to reach than I’d thought. Two hours instead of one-and-a-half, but there and back that’s an extra hour. Which meant a dash to get to Marlborough country by 3pm instead of 2pm for lunch. Lunch. The first place we tried had just finished serving and given our hunger, our mood was a little grim. So we were relieved when the second winery we tried, Hunters, was open for lunch. We even progressed to happy after a glass of wine and a nice sharing plate of goodies. And we still had time for tastings here and at a second winery, which made us very happy (though not over-the-limit happy on my part, I should add). My favourite from Hunters was their 2010 Gewurztraminer, turkish delight in a bottle. My favourite from Huia was their 2004 Blanc de Blanc bubbly, really a straight-up champagne with lots of sophisticated biscuit and brown bread.

Today is eight months, the two-thirds point of our year, so I’m very glad it was saved by the wine. Dolphin Swimming part 2 tomorrow, wish us luck.

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