Making a dull drive more interesting
We descend on the top of the South Island as summer hits its stride.
With our tents and sunscreen in the boot, and a boat hitched to the back of the car, we escape from our working lives and head to places that scream sun: Nelson, Takaka, Collingwood, Kaiteriteri.
All that stands in the way for many is a ferry ride to Picton than a two-hour drive to Nelson.
There are three ways to do this. The first is verging on dull and unnecessarily-long. You can join the State Highway 1 rat race to Blenheim then take SH6 to Nelson.
The next is a variation on that journey: SH1 to Spring Creek, then take SH62 through wine country – bypassing Blenheim in the process – before jumping onto SH6 for the trip to Nelson.
Many balk at option three, the Queen Charlotte Drive, which winds up a steep hill from Picton and drops through or above picturesque bays – Shakespeare, Whenuanai, Ngakuta, Momorangi – then through a small plateau at Linkwater, before more tight curves and dropping down to Havelock.
In reality, this drive is infinitely-nicer than its southern alternatives and adds no more than 10 minutes to the trip, even accounting for the campervans and cyclists blocking the narrow road with little room to pull over.
Coming out at Havelock and on to SH6 the road leaves the sea and winds up beside the Pelorus River.
Canvastown – named for the tent town set up during a gold mining rush of a bygone era – is worth a brief stop but Pelorus Bridge is, for many, a destination in itself. It has one of New Zealand’s best swimming holes, in fact the upper South Island has more than its fair share of these.
The highway dog-legs north from Pelorus Bridge up the Rai Valley which, in its own way, has a barren beauty.
Somewhere after Rai Valley, Marlborough becomes Nelson and the road passes over the Whangamoa – a winding hill surrounded by forestry where drivers hell-bent on reaching Nelson are fond of terrifying overtaking.
They needn’t worry.
Soon Tasman Bay unveils itself to the north and there is nothing but a short drive along the Nelson Haven – an estuary that turns from mud-flat to water-fill haven with alarming regularity – into Nelson and summer, and sunburn, and mosquitoes, and wasps, and sand in odd places.