Friday 9th April – Picton to Wellington

 

Friday 9th April – Picton to Wellington

We up-sticksed (?) early and drove to Picton to meet Doug Mills for coffee at the Mariners Mall. We parked the caravan on the side of the hill going up to the New World supermarket, Broadway. . Scoozi, the café Doug had suggested, was closed till 10:00am so went down to the harbour and had coffee in the SeaBreeze café. The staff all seemed to know Doug well. It had a great outlook out over the harbour front.

We got a text from BlueBridge to say that the ferry was delayed and that check-in would now be 2:00pm instead of 1:00pm.

From there we went back to the caravan to take it down to park it near the BlueBridge Ferry terminal. I realised that the caravan was awfully close to a large concrete power pole. I backed up very carefully to get the caravan clear of it and then watched the oncoming traffic in the driver’s mirror as I turned out into the road, only to hear a gronching noise as the power pole ripped off the outside light above the door and a high rear light. The back end of the caravan had swung in as the car swung out! 

Bugger!

Nothing we could do about it so we cut our losses, drove down to the Ferry Terminal, and parked there about 11:30am and went for a walk. We had to back at about 1:30 to drive to the check in.

We walked up to Broadway and then up over the river and the railway line towards the Town Centre. We had lunch at a nearby café. Spotted this nearby the New World supermarket. The first word says "Mikhail":-

We still had plenty of time so headed down towards the Harbour and the Edwin Fox museum. It was $12 each to get in so just looked at it from the outside.

The walk from there to the promenade sea front was lovely – paved walkways, plenty of grass and trees. 

There was a lovely old building down there – “Oxleys”. 

Close by was the “Coathanger” foot bridge.

The harbour is a very picturesque place!

At about 1:00pm we headed back to the caravan. Our first job was to try and fix the caravan lights – the joint between the caravan and the car was dodgy and the lights kept flicking on and off again! With some duck tape and old shoelaces we bound the joint up tight, 

We then drove  off to the terminal at about 1:30. We were able to check in and joined a queue in Lane 1. We sat there till 3:15 before we began the loading process

The ferry was called “Strait Feroni”. It really has everything you could want on board. We final left at 4:15! The crossing itself was smooth.

Got to Wellington at 7:45 and finally drove off into the Wellington night at about 8:15!

With our fingers crossed that our repair job on the caravan lights would work, we drove off to Plimmerton on the motorway. We arrived at about 8:45 with a big sigh of relief and found the caravan park nearly full – only one space left at the back.

Had dinner at 9:15.

What a day!