Pelorus Bridge

After Punakaiki we drove to Pelorus Bridge – from the barrel-rolling scene in The Hobbit – and realised (too late) that we had left Jess’s phone behind in the room. Apparently next day delivery doesn’t exist in NZ, so rather than sending it ahead of us to pick up in Auckland, we’ve had to ask them to post it back to the UK! Who knows, it may beat us home...

The camp ground at Pelorus Bridge came highly recommended, but what we didn’t know is that it has two sites... and we were put on the other site to start with...

We parked up, and looked around: it was little more than a car park, completely surrounded by trees, with numbered power points.

I very much did not want my last night on the South Island to be somewhere so un-picturesque, so we asked the ranger if there were any sites left on the other side... and he said yes, so off we went!

We were rather happier with this one! The sandflies were still a problem, but being quite a bit further North – and away from the winds of the West Coast – we needed the windows open. So we improvised with a mosquito net and our laundry bag...

I have to say, it worked rather well! I’m not sure we’d win any design awards though...

One of the walking tracks from the campsite was called ‘Waterfall Track’ so we decided to have a wander and take a look – we do like a good waterfall. I imagine in winter this one might not be too bad...

At least the walk was good exercise!

The other thing about this campsite is that it was unbelievably quiet! There were not people opening and slamming doors at 5am... and our spot was completely shaded, so we didn’t wake up until nearly 8am – unheard of really on this sort of holiday!

We got up and drove past our previous Marlborough campsite (Spring Creek), and one of our favourite wineries and places to eat (Wairau River) – all the way up to Picton, which is where we realised we didn’t have Jess’s phone. The people at the information centre kindly let us use their phone – until we finally tracked hers down – having also emptied the van onto the car park looking for it.