We rose early today (6am) as we had to catch (finally) the 8:30 Wellington to Picton ferry. We had a quick breakfast and Jackie took her travel sickness pills. We left the camp at 7am as we had to be at the terminal with the camper for 7:30.

No problems getting there, just the one detour due to a misleading sign but all went well really and we were in the queue for the ferry by 7:30 as planned.

It was all very efficiently run and we actually as luck would have it ended up directly in front of the exit door at the other end of the ship.

Then up to deck 7 to the lounge. The Ship (the Challenger) used to be used on amongst others the Cherbourg run across the English channel and as a result is well equipped for rough weather but not so for a finer climate but there is a sun deck and you can walk around part of deck 7 on the out side. The ship isn't in bad condition at all; I couldn't work out its actual age.

Jackie wasn't much company on the trip as she had taken two travel sickness pills and they totally zonked her out, she slept for nearly 2 hours of the 3 and a bit hour trip, I wondered the decks alone like some lonely abandoned mariner, lonely actually was a hard thing to be as the ship was packed with people.

The journey is considered one of the most picturesque ferry journeys in the world and I am prepared to agree with that. The weather was quite overcast and a bit cold on the journey but it brightened up before we got to Picton and turned out quite warm (about 22 deg).

We arrived in Picton just before 12 noon and decided that a quick dash to Havelock was in order as the camp site isn't large and all the plots would go quickly. The Picton to Havelock road is another challenging one with many hairpin bends and concealed corners, but of no consequence to a man of my abilities (more grey hairs).

We stopped at a look out half way along the journey and on the top of a hill, it looked innocent enough and provided a magnificent view but when you had driven down the narrow lane way to the car park at the end it turned out to be very small and already nearly at capacity having several campers and many cars in it, the addition of our large camper made things much worse and there was much head scratching as people worked out how to get away. One guy needed more space to turn his sedan than we ended up needing to turn a 6 berth camper in. It all worked out in the end though.

We arrived in Havelock and got one of the last powered sites for the night. Many campers were turned away after us. Havelock is a sleepy little town whose main industry now is tourism and green lipped mussels harvesting, it once was a gold mining town. The new mariner is very impressive and well serviced the camp site is right in the middle of the small town and close to the 4 restaurants & pubs.

We took a walk around the town looking at the sites and historic monuments and information boards etc. A highlight of the walk was down at the boat launching ramp where a local had fallen foul of the extremely large difference between high and low tide (about 3 mtrs) he had moored above the slip way on to the floating jetty and when the tide went out he was high and dry, the boat was a large plywood number and the boats weight had seemingly broken the keel, result a big hole in the bottom. They were using a crane to put it on a trailer before the tide came in again.

Then we went back to the camper and the out for our evening meal at the Mussel pot restaurant and had a very tasty meal of steamed green lipped mussels.