Picton to Motueka

After a really good night's sleep we were up and ready to get our van on the road. We asked the campsite to book us into another site at Motueka and off we trolled. We had a little difficulty finding the right road bit once we did it was magnificent following the Queen Charlotte Sound.
Full of bends and frequent stops for the expedition photographer it was a great way to learn the foibles of our new monster machine, like she does't like going up hills in fourth and that 80kmh seems very fast. That and having to use the road with good manners , means pulling over to let the queue of traffic that has for we behind you past made for an interesting drive. The van rattles rather a lot and we will have to see what we can do about that. As we ride over the engine it is also rather noisy, having done 172900 km, it is hardly new. In fact for a five year old vehicle it seems sadly battered.
We had a lunch stop in lay by at the top of a mountain where little black insects decided to make a feast on my feet and boy did they hurt when they bit.
We arrived in Nelson and  I made my mistake of the day getting in the wrong lane, as I attempted to put this right I seemed to have upset a young female NZ driver who decided to give me the finger as she drove past.some people just don't have the necessary manners on the road any more. I had signalled I was turning into the left lane and I had waited for her to under take me but apparently this was not enough.
The drive from Nelson to Motueka was lovely clearly on a reclaimed road with water on both sides with mountains rising in the distance. We arrived at about 4.00pm having done about 170km but having now gotten a much better picture of what the van will do and what she won't.
We found a nice site, explored the camping ground, sat in the sun reading our books for quite a while had a beer or two and cooked our tea. A nice glass of NZ Pinot noir and we decided to face time Emma just for the sake of it . this led to a minor discussion about the time in England and both of us got it wrong, with the result that we woke Emma at about 7.30 in the morning. after the call we had a frank discussion about how many hours England is behind NZ and it took some persuasion on my part to get the expedition mathematician to understand it was thirteen and not eleven hours. this discussion eventually had to be finished in biro on a piece of paper before the light came on. Still us retired folks are allowed to get things wrong from time to time.
Having successfully annoyed Emma we made our own way to bed fairly satisfied with our day's activities.