Windy Wellington!

We left a calm Richmond early this morning intending to drive to Picton to see if there was a possibility of getting the ferry back to Wellington.

My 96 year old mother had been shifted to the hospital wing of her retirement home and I decided that due to the fact that today was Mothers Day in New Zealand I wanted to visit her.

We had a good trip back up and arrived at Picton around 12.30pm.  I went in and booked the trip across on the Bluebridge Ferry for 2pm.  Couldn’t have been easier.  With the NZMCA discount the cost was $7.00 cheaper than on the Interislander that we travelled down on in February.

We had a reasonably calm trip across Cook Strait in brilliant sunshine. It was dark when we arrived in Wellington around 5.30pm so we headed straight up State Highway 1 to Paremata where we knew we could park overnight. The weather was predicted to worsen and sure enough it was blowing a gale directly off the Tasman Sea when we got there. We decided not to park in the usual spot but headed for the car park where it was a little more sheltered. After a couple of hours with the wind intensifying we turned around and faced into the wind.  We were joined by a small hire campervan around midnight who sheltered in behind us.

This morning we headed across the park to pick up some flowers and chocolates for Mum before driving the 3 or 4 Kms to visit her.  She was pleasantly surprised to see us after being away for 3 months.

We then headed over Haywards Hill to the Hutt Valley and are now parked up at our friend Kathryn’s in Stokes Valley.