Picton is an OK little seaside township but the weather ain't great. We booked to go on a winery tour in the afternoon and are sceptical when the driver promises us sunshine, but he's right. Just south of Picton is Marlborough wine country, a big flat valley full of vineyards. The mountains stop 90% of the clouds and it rarely rains. Bizarrely, the hills to one side are green but the 'dry hills' to the other are arid and yellow because they never see rain.
Only one of us really enjoyed the wine-tastings but we picked up some interesting wine facts along the way. Next time you drink a NZ sauvignon blanc, it probably came from here.
The evening is pretty disastrous. First we stick some laundry in the local laundromat but it closes 2 hours ahead of schedule with our clothes still in the washer. The advantage of a small town is that someone in the pub knows the owner and gives him a call for us. Then our dinner takes so long to arrive that we give up (having chased it 10 minutes earlier and being told it is "just being dished up") and Lilly insists that we storm out without paying for our drinks. The waitress seems fine with this, but it does leave us looking for dinner at 9pm in a sleepy township... Fortunately we sneak in somewhere else just before it closes.
On Saturday we follow an immensely twisty coast road, in torrential (or 'driving', hee hee) rain to Nelson, which is a bit bigger - Lilly's preferred type of small town with a few 'cool shops' and a 'decent vibe'* - and we have a bit of a stroll around town.
* Or, as she said, the sort of small town she would live in if she were going to live in a small town - which she definitely isn't!
In the afternoon we pop over to Founder's Brewery for a quick taster menu of their multi-award-winning organic beers (must admit that none of them really won any prizes with me but a nice little garden for a tipple). It's set in a strange little compound of historic buildings - bakery, church, firehouse etc - that have been relocated here for preservation or recreated here. We got in free by explaining we only wanted the brewery, but had a cheeky look round on the way out - it's quite fun.
Finally we hit the beach. At 5pm on a lovely, sunny Saturday afternoon there are fewer than 100 people on a long curve of sandy beach on the outskirts of Nelson. If I threw one of the many shells there is maybe one other person within range, if I picked a really aerodynamic shell and spent half an hour practicing. Lilly has just bought a new swimsuit but for some complex reason connecting with "changing" she has stolen my spare shorts and the T-shirt off my back to go for a swim. Six hours ago it was coming down in buckets, now it's buckets and spades weather. I might go for a dip too. See you later.
Postscript - thanks to the nice people who (unlike us) realised that the tide was coming in while we were swimming and saved our stuff from a bathe!
*re the title of this post - Think about it. Maybe say it out loud.
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