Time to Move on...

Tuesday 14 January

Time to leave Nelson for Motueka, and to lose a fellow traveller…

Hitched up and collected our passengers - said goodbye to Mitch, Caroline’s feline AirBnB host, then parked up in the trailer length spaces at Mitre10 and popped next door to the Classic Car Museum - where we had a delicious breakfast!

The museum was amazing - 121 years of automobile history with some absolute stunners… and a Reliant Robin!

We got to climb in some of the cars which was fascinating - so much change in even my lifetime… and I’m not sure Amy has ever been in a car with a window winder handle at all!

Several of the cars had a special resonance for us - I used to work on Jaguar programmes in my first incentive travel job back in 1990, and when Louis and I left Great Fosters at the end of our wedding in 1997, we were driven off in a Jaguar Mark 2 - very like the one below.

Linus has owned Minis all her car driving life, so she was stoked to find one of a similar vintage to her first car!

Other vehicles held a popular culture fame - from the futuristic madness of the Delorean as featured in Back to the Future, to Del Boy's classic Robin Reliant from Only Fools and Horses.

I became slightly obsessed with the various hood ornaments and am rather sad we don’t really have these any more.

Once we had done our dash at the museum, we dropped Amy off at the airport around lunchtime and headed north & west to Motueka.

There we settled in to the very expensive but well equipped and friendly Top Ten campsite. Picnic style lunch of leftovers in the sun then I took Linus and her Minions to their AirBnB (less stylish than Nelson, but very welcoming hosts).

Siestaed and chilled then met up, quizzed the campsite receptionist about best things to do locally (brilliantly informative young woman) before walking back to the main drag for Thai for dinner in one of the few open restaurants in town - turns out Tuesday is Motueka’s day of rest!