Places



Picton


Tags logs walk
This post was published on Friday 25 January 2019.

Picton is a funny place – it’s basically a small town centred around a ferry port and water taxis – so it’s relatively industrial (compared to most of NZ) but you can still get a good view – if you climb.

And that’s exactly what Jess and I did after arriving early to change our ferry booking from the evening to a lunchtime ferry. Here’s Picton from the top of the Tirohanga Track...

That’s the Queen Charlotte Sound in the distance, and a ridge that we nearly did a long walk along, but the road to get there looked awful, so we decided not to bother – and we still got some pretty good views!

The lady at the i-SITE told us that a huge cruise ship – one of the largest in the world – was pulling into Shakespeare Bay (the next bay along from Picton), and that it would be worth a look.

So we dutifully drove round the bay to take a look – and it wasn’t there. However, we did see this...

https://youtu.be/hto5EkiPpe0

I’ve never seen so many logs – apart from at the the port in Wellington, which has just as many! Being NZ, all of them are felled sustainably, from quick-growing forests, and are used in building construction to help make things earthquake resistant.

The ferry itself was much nicer than the ferry in the opposite direction – and we decided to upgrade to a cabin, which was a very good decision, as the Cook Strait had gale-force winds across it, making the crossing really quite rough.