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| Cycling the Tasman Great Taste Trail |
Nelson is a sophisticated, arty city, established by English settlers in
1841. It is a great place to spend a few
days visiting the cafes and restaurants, museums, markets and galleries. Our favourite place to park the bus is at a
pub called The Honest Lawyer on the
Monaco Peninsula, just outside the city centre.
It is a POP, so free to stay for NZMCA members, though we always spend
some time inside the quaint English-style pub, or relaxing in the waterside
gardens with a drink or meal.
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| At the Honest Lawyer |
We
discovered The Honest Lawyer by chance when we were cycling the Tasman Great
Taste cycle trail. This trail comprises
three separate routes: the rail route, the valley route and the coastal
route—the last being the one we cycled.
This easy, flat ride follows the Tasman Bay coast around the Waimea
Inlet to Rabbit Island, across by ferry to Mapua and up the coast to Motueka
before finishing at Kaiteriteri. Of
course, we rode the trail in stages over several days—sampling food and drink
as we passed through townships, vineyards, orchards, olive groves and
hop-growing areas.
The
waters of the peaceful Waimea Inlet sparkled as we cycled along the boardwalks
and cycle tracks that bordered the estuary.
A wide range of seabirds could be seen here including royal spoonbills,
white herons, godwits, egrets and banded rail, so we kept our eyes peeled. Mapua Wharf was once one of the country's
largest collection points for the apple harvest—now it is a quiet and pretty
spot, where we whiled away some time over a coffee. The Nelson area is renowned for its artists
and there are galleries aplenty at Mapua, and along the cycle trail too. From Mapua we meandered along the Ruby Bay
coast, past seaside settlements and on to Tasman where the quirky Jester House
Cafe has a garden setting and tame eels in a stream.
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| On the cycle trail |
On a quiet road between Lower
Motuere and the Moutere Inlet we came across another offbeat eatery, the Riverside
Cafe. This was part of the Riverside
Community, New Zealand's oldest 'Intentional Community', founded in
1941—pre-dating hippy communes and still flourishing. This area was once a centre for tobacco-growing
but things changed after the introduction of grape vines in the 1970s. The region is now full of vineyards, that
have cellar door tastings and restaurants.
When
cycling the final stages of the trail we parked Tangaroa at Motueka, which is a good service town with a
laundrette, supermarket and a wide variety of shops. There is also a Sunday market, with food and
craft stalls, which is worth checking out.
We stayed at the freedom camping area (it has a donation box) at the end
of wharf road. Just at this point there
were some unusual saltwater baths. They
were built in 1938 as the beach was considered unsafe for bathing because there
were sharks in the bay. The concrete
walls of the baths were up-graded in 1992.
Some hardy children were having fun there when we cycled past. The cycle trail at Motueka takes riders
through very pretty coastal scenery and an inland area of orchards before
reaching the coast again at the spot where Arthur Wakefield stepped ashore in
1841. He was looking for a place to
found what became the city of Nelson.
The
last three kilometres of the Great Taste Trail passed through a mountain bike park,
which is fun for those who like the adrenaline rush. Kaiteriteri was a beautiful spot, though rather
a victim of its own popularity. Split
Apple Bay Beach, a little further around the coast, was more off the beaten
track and a great place for a quiet picnic.
There was a short bush walk from a car park to the beach.
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| Split Apple Bay |
Wanting
to walk the southern part of the Abel Tasman Walkway, we parked at a campground
in Marahau, close to the start of the track.
We had arranged in Motueka for a water taxi to pick us up the next
day. In retrospect, it would have been
better to have organised this at Marahau as the boats left from the beach near
our campground, whereas to pick up the one we had booked, we had to walk for
nearly two hours up the track to Apple Tree Bay. The sun was shining however, the sea was blue
and the views amazing, so we didn't mind too much.
We
had a bouncy but interesting ride around to Anchorage, which has a beautiful
stretch of white sand beach. We
clambered out of the boat and admired the scenery for a while, then set off on
the track back to Marahau. The first
section led steeply up to a hilltop, with spectacular views down to Anchorage
and north up the coast. We ate lunch
here, then enjoyed the four-hour walk back through lush, forested slopes with
cliff-top views of the inlets and beaches below. Because I love the beach and the bush I
really enjoyed walking the Abel Tasman Coastal Walkway. One day we'll go back and experience the
middle section.
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| On this stretch of the Abel Tasman walk |
Having
done some walking and cycling, we moved the bus to a freedom camping spot at
Norris Gully near Spooners Saddle and set out to explore the fertile valleys
inland by car. Names like Brooklyn,
Orinoco and Woodstock were intriguing.
In the peaceful Motueka Valley we came to Tapawera. This little settlement had a pretty garden
area, incorporating an interesting Māori gateway celebrating the explorer and
surveyor Thomas Brunner and his Māori guide, E Kehu. In 1842 the pair surveyed the Motueka
hinterlands and later other areas.
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| Tapawera |
An old railway station with the sign
name of Kiwi caught our attention. This
turned out to be the township's museum where we learned the story of the area
and the history of the railway in particular.
I hadn't known that in 1954 a group of elderly and middle-aged women had
made headlines internationally when they staged a sit-in, protesting the
closure of the line from Nelson. Rumours
of communists and saboteurs led the security police to swoop on the group, who
they found to be sitting quietly on the railway lines, knitting and
chatting. Unfortunately the protest was
unsuccessful and the railway was ripped up.
We drove along the road past the
former stations and halts of Kiwi, Tui, Kaka and Huia, but there was little
evidence that the railway was ever there.
The area was sparsely populated farmland, with the odd pretty, wooden
church beside the road, and forested hillsides that gave way to distant
mountain views.
The
Marlborough Sounds were our next port of call.
We drove over the Whangamoa Saddle and tucked Tangaroa into a small freedom camping spot in the Rai valley. From here we drove the 57 twisty kilometres,
along mainly unsealed road, to French Pass.
This was a very scenic drive—locals claim it rivals the beauty of the
road to Milford Sound and those around Queenstown. The road from Rai Valley met the sounds at
pretty Okiwi Bay, then wiggled along a ridge with views down to Squally Cove on
one hand and the Tennyson Inlet on the other.
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| The road to French Pass |
From
Elaine Bay the unsealed road took about an hour to drive, with frequent
photo-stops, before coming to the pass itself.
The Māori name for French Pass is Te Aumiro-o-te-kawau-a-toru, the swishing
currents of the shag, Toru. This shag
was supposed to have led the explorer Kupe to the French Pass, where it
drowned. In 1827, the Frenchman
D'Urville, aboard the Astrolabe,
first crossed the treacherous stretch of water between what is now D'Urville
Island and the mainland—the passage has been called French Pass since. Information boards at a viewpoint explained
that the passage has a very strong flow (up to eight knots), water level
variations, tidal rips, back eddies and turbulence caused by unevenness of the
sea floor. Boats may pass (carefully) at
slack water but French Pass retains its fearsome reputation.
The
information panels also recounted the story of Pelorus Jack, a Risso's dolphin,
which used to accompany ships sailing in the Pelorus Sound up to French Pass. For 24 years, after he was first spotted in
1888, Pelorus Jack was a favourite with locals and visitors alike. He became protected by law after someone shot
at him from a steamer. Reports of the
dolphin's death vary. Some say he washed
ashore after dying of old age, others that he was harpooned by Norwegian
whalers. Another man confessed—on his
deathbed—to killing Pelorus Jack after the dolphin had stranded in a
storm. Nowadays several varieties of
dolphins can be spotted at French Pass, though we weren't lucky enough to see
any on our visit.
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| Tangaroa at Koromiko |
We
did some more exploring of the Marlborough Sounds, basing ourselves at Koromiko
near Picton. This peaceful POP was in a paddock,
with lots of big trees for shade and sheep to keep the grass down. We enjoyed wandering round Picton, looking at
the craft and art shops and drinking coffee in the cafes. The harbour is busy with every kind of craft,
from the inter-island ferries to yachts, fishing boats, launches and dinghies.
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| Queen Charlotte Sound |
Another
road trip took us from Picton to Titirangi Bay via the picturesque Queen
Charlotte Drive, then along the spine of the long, narrow neck of land that separates
the Kenepuru and Queen Charlotte Sounds. The last section was beside the
Endeavour Inlet and Melville Cove, to what seemed like the end of the
world. The first stretch of the road was
sealed, as far as Kenepuru Head, but the rest was unsealed, steep and windy
(like all these adventurous roads tend to be).
We stopped at Te Mahia, where a sign on the roadside indicated that a
'resort' and 'coffee' could be found down a driveway. This was how we came across a tiny cafe with
one of the best views in the world.
At
Kenepuru Head the road became really wild and woolly! Up ridges and through beech forests we drove,
occasionally glimpsing Melville Cove through gaps in the bush. Suddenly we came
out on an open ridge, with views steeply down to Titirangi Bay and across past
the Chetwode and Titi Islands, towards the North Island. As we had driven along from Linkwater we had
encountered slips that had been cleared away sufficiently to allow a vehicle to
squeeze past, but on this steeply zigzagging stretch of road we found a digger
and its crew still working on a massive slip.
They cheerfully scraped a passage through and we continued on to the
bay. At the end of the road we found a
basic campground, which was a good place for our picnic lunch before we began
the journey back to the bus.
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| The road to Titirangi Bay |
Seeing
the Marlborough Sounds by car is amazing enough, but for a really unforgettable
experience I recommend walking the Queen Charlotte Track. We started this multi-day walk just before
Christmas, taking a water-taxi from Picton to Ship's Cove. Named by James Cook when he anchored the Endeavour here in 1770, he made the bay
his base. Between 1770 and 1777, Cook
spent 170 days anchored at Ship's Cove. Cook's crew and local Māori had plenty
of contact during the time that the Europeans were exploring the area.
Māori
had long occupied the sounds. Seasonal
camps and pā sites are found throughout the area. There is a legend regarding Kupe's exploring
exploits that is commemorated here—Kupe is said to have fought a giant octopus
in Cook Strait and, as it thrashed around, it carved out the islands, passages
and inlets of the Marlborough Sounds. The pou at Ship's Cove celebrate this
adventure. We took photographs of the
memorials to both Māori and Europeans at the cove then began our first day's
walk.
Like
the Abel Tasman walkway, the Queen Charlotte Track meanders close to the water
through lush coastal bush. It goes
across ridges and down to beaches. There
are always amazing views, either down to the sounds—dotted with islands—or
across to the bush-clad mountains. There
was a lot of bird-life—weka would come and try to join us for lunch! We took the easy option and had our
belongings delivered by water taxi to our overnight accommodation, so only
needed to carry a day-pack. It was
wonderful to be able to luxuriate in the evenings with a shower, or even a soak
in a spa pool!
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| On the Queen Charlotte Track |
The
walk normally takes three days but, since the third day was Christmas, we had
pre-booked Christmas dinner at Portage.
Māori had first carried their canoes from sound to sound at this narrow,
low spot and Europeans followed their example, hence its name. The meal was wonderful and it was good to
have a relaxing day before our final trek.
The next day we completed the walk at Anakiwa and took a water taxi back
to Picton.
Before
leaving Marlborough we moved Tangaroa
to Blenheim. Malcolm was very keen to
visit Sir Peter Jackson's exhibitions at the Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre. 'Knights of the Sky' focused on the
development of aircraft during World War I and 'Dangerous Skies' featured World
War II stories. No stuffy old museum
this—the huge movie-like sets were created by Weta Workshops and Wingnut
Films. Jackson has a huge World War I
aviation collection that is showcased here.
We spent a couple of hours looking
at such scenes as the Red Baron's crash-landed wreckage—which is surrounded by
airmen stripping the plane for souvenirs.
Another astonishing life-sized tableau featured a plane that had crashed
into a tree during a snowstorm. The
arresting figure of Russian aviatrix Lydia Litvyak, a Soviet flying ace known
as the 'White Lily of Stalingrad', looked as though she might turn and speak to
us at any moment.
Amazing
though these scenes were, I spent a lot of time in the memorabilia area— which
I found fascinating but poignant.
Uniforms were displayed with information about the (mostly very young)
men who wore them. There were letters
from family and keepsakes from sweethearts, which brought a very real sense of
humanity to the exhibition.
Our
final walk in this area took us through the Wairau Lagoons. These lagoons are part of an extensive
wetlands area, sheltered behind a boulder bank at the south end of Cloudy
Bay. The boulder bank runs for eight
kilometres and two main lagoons have formed over the last six and a half
thousand years. The circular walk took
us three hours, the track skirting the Upper Lagoon and the channel that lead
to the ocean at Wairau Bar. Excavations
at the bar have discovered the remains of a Māori 'Moa Hunter' camp at the
northern end of the boulder bank. These
early inhabitants of the area trapped birds and eels, and they may have
narrowed some of the channels to trap fish.
We
began the walk at the car park at the end of Hardings Road, where there were
sign boards with information about the area.
The walk could be taken in either direction but we took the shortest,
left hand, track towards the wrecked remains of the SS Waverley. Built in 1883,
the Waverley was towed from
Wellington to the mouth of the Wairau River, where she was to be scuttled to
form a breakwater. However, a flood
swept her up the channel and into the lagoons where she has remained since,
slowly rusting away. It was a slightly
surreal moment when the rusty hulk loomed into view above the dry grasses, with
no water to be seen until we got closer.
At
this point there was a side track that continued in the direction of Wairau
Bar. Like the Polynesian arrivals before
them, European pioneers made a settlement here in 1832. Sixteen years later an earthquake improved
navigation to the river and in 1855 another quake improved access even
more. This made it possible for
sea-going vessels to navigate to Blenheim, then known as Beavertown because of
the frequent flooding.
The wetlands were full of life, from
scuttling crabs and sinuous eels, to over seventy species of birdlife. We spotted black swans (with their cygnets),
royal spoonbills and Canadian geese, along with other, more common, birds, such
as shags. Sedge, glasswort and other
specialised plants were thriving on the flat sandy tidal flats, bisected by
streams that flowed from the mountains.
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| Wairau Lagoons |
The views were marvellous, with the
Robertson Range to the north and White Bluffs to the south. The return journey took us past Budges and
Morepo Islands, then we looped inland across the salt marshes, crossed at their
wettest by boardwalks. In the three
hours we were at the lagoons we didn't see another soul and only heard the
honks of geese and songs of the birds.
Information about places mentioned in this post - correct at the time of writing
Walks
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Abel Tasman Coastal Track
www.doc.govt.nz/abeltasmantrack
Anchorage to Marahau:
12.4 km, 4 hrs, great walk: easier tramping track
Access: by water taxi
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Queen Charlotte Track
www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-go/marlborough/places/queen-charlotte-sound-totaranui-area/things-to-do/tracks/queen-charlotte-track
71 km, 3-5 days, great
walk: easier tramping track
Access: by water taxi
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Wairau Lagoons
3 hr loop, easy: walking
track
Access: 154, Hardings Rd,
Wither Hills, Riverlands
Cycle Trails
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Tasman Great Taste Trail
https://www.nzcycletrail.com/trails/tasmans-great-taste-trail/
Nelson to Kaiteriteri, 72
km, grade 2: easy
Places to visit
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Omaka Aviation Centre
79, Aerodrome Rd, Omaka,
Blenheim
www.omaka.org.nz
Knights of the Sky
WW1 exhibition:
adult $25, senior and student $23, child $12
Dangerous Skies
WW2 exhibition:
adult $20, senior and student $18, child $10
Both exhibitions: adult $39, senior and student
$35, child $16
Hours: 1 May-30 November
10.00 am-5.00 pm, 1 December-30 April 9.00 am-5.00 pm
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