It was a reasonably early start as we walked onto the water taxi. A pretty ordinary trip out to Ship Cove, stunning scenery, a few rocky moments under the wake of the ferry, and a short commentary on the history of the sounds together with a few tall stories.
Ship cove was a shelter for Captain Cook during his 4 voyages to New Zealand. Shelter, scurvy grass, fresh water and friendly natives were a nice welcome for his crew after travelling from the UK. There is a memorial to him and his crew at the Cove, which we briefly looked at - we were keen to be on our way.
The first part of the trail was steep and rocky - fun climbing up. Harry and I soon realised that if we had bought our bikes we would have been out of our depth. Getting ourselves to the top was enough without pushing the bikes. Up and down went the trail with little appetising snippets of the rocky coastline below, deep blue water edged by native bush and the birdsong of tui, weka, korero and bell bird intermingled with the loud chirp of the cricket.
After a while we stopped for lunch and realised that it wasn't a good thing to leave Don and Judy behind at Ship Cove to look at the monuments - they had the bread for the sandwiches, we had the filling. Good thing they walked a bit faster than us as we were just settling down to biscuits and orgages when they turned up.
Amused by the weka pecking around our feet while we ate we then packed up and continued on our way. The trip took us about 4.5 hours (excluding lunch) and we thoroughly enjoyed it, as well as the relaxing on the verandah of Fernaux lodge. The water taxi was on time (to the second) and after a breezy start and a few drop offs for more mail we sat on the grass in Picton for a very lengthy wait for fish and chips. It was such a glorious day we didn't mind sitting with a cool ginger beer.
One of our best days yet. We are planning to do more.
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