Monday, November 30, 2009
Martinborough Weekend
In the first weekend of November Katrina and I did the (almost) unprecedented, we had a weekend away without Guy! Sans Bebe! Hard to believe, actually hard to do, I felt quite ill at ease as we drove away leaving his big cousin Amy to look after him for 3 days and two nights.
We retreated over the Rimutaka ranges to Martinborough were a colleague of Katrina rents out his beautifully restored cottage. It was a wonderfully relaxing spot, a big deck onto a big back lawn, soft grass, flat and NO WIND! It even came with its own lawn mower, which kept the grass down and the roses pruned!
It was hard to know what to do with ourselves so we went for a drive, all the way out to Cape Palliser, the south-eastern corner of the North Island. It is an unforgettable drive, especially on a clear warm spring day that we had. The village of Ngawi (nar-wee) is home to a commerical fishing fleet, but the sea is so unpredicatable the boats are hauled up the stoney beach rather than moored. There is an even smaller settlement just before the cape itself, which you can see in this photo with the light house. With its dry rocky hills, and villages with geraniums in pots, this coast feels almost mediterrean. Gazania flowers have escaped and carpeted the roadside.
From the light house the view west and east is almost devoid of civilisation, picturesque on a day like this, but I think the little white light housekeepers house must be one of the loneliest spots in New Zealand at dusk on a winters afternoon, head down to the beach and the next stop is Antarctica.
On the way back we stopped at the Lake Ferry Hotel, which is a Tavern on the shore of Lake Ferry, and estuary where the Ruamahunga river, and all the rivers that drain the Wairarapa plains make their way into Cook Strait. We enjoyed a cold pint of lager and some hot potato wedges, backgounded noise from the Sky TV rugby channel and the inevitable beer company merchandise ,while overlooking a restless, uneasy sea, nibbling at the edge of a raw boned land. It was beautiful but surreal. If you rememeber Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, there was 'Milliways, the restaurant at the end of the Universe' , now I know where Douglas Adams got the inspiration.
