Old Slaughterhouse Lodge, St Arnaud, Wairau, and home

We leapt out of bed to pack up and try to eat the last of our food - sausage and eggs for breakfast. Time to sort our stuff and send it back down the hill on Suzanne's ATV. But we carried most of our tramping packs down to give her a reasonable load. 

Leftover tramping food. I overcatered!

Black cat helps me pack

Goodbye view

First stop was in Westport to drop off Allyson, outside the YHA hostel where her friend was staying. She's starting another adventure! YHA hostel looked really nice, in ways Allyson's Westport accommodation wasn't.

Now we had a pretty short drive - less than 4 hours - to get to Picton, and all day to do it. So we took our time.

Murchison Cafe was our first stop for elevenses. Their iced coffee was good. Then we caught up on the Stuff Quiz as we drove. The hours flew by.

We stopped again in St Arnaud, because it's impossible to drive past that view. We also found the new St Arnaud Tavern for lunch, in the new subdivision behind the petrol station. It was a lot nicer than the petrol station cafe! I think Alpine Lodge is still the pick of the bunch but the Tavern is close competition.

Obligatory St Arnaud Pier photos

A local bylaw makes it illegal to drive past without taking this photo

Afternoon tea was at the Wairau River Winery. These folks are well set up for light meals in their garden behind the cellar door, and after a week of tramping and self catering it was sooo nice to have friendly wait staff bring us wine and cheese and affogato and tiramisu.

And that brought our adventures to an end. Thanks Janine for all the organisation and the extensive trello board to make it happen. What a superb week with so much packed into very little time.