{"id":4785,"date":"2024-10-25T10:55:09","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T10:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/?p=4785"},"modified":"2024-10-28T06:51:15","modified_gmt":"2024-10-28T06:51:15","slug":"crossing-cook-strait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/?p=4785","title":{"rendered":"Crossing Cook Strait"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

OK, so I’m starting this one the day before, with the arrival into Picton. I could have booked the ferry for that afternoon, or even that evening, but I wasn’t sure how much wiggle room was needed between train & ferry, and I kind of like Picton, so I stayed the night at a place where I’ve stayed before, back in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tombstone Motel, Lodge, & Backpackers, on Gravesend Place, opposite the Cemetery. I’m honestly a little surprised they didn’t lean into the theme more than they’ve done, though I guess a full cartoon-horror theme probably puts people off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It sits on a hill off to one side of the town, so you get a view of the ferry port, and the fairly intricate loading & unloading process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Picton doesn’t seem to have changed much. I think the Aquarium & Movie Theatre (same place, they walk you in past the fishtanks) has been replaced by the building surrounding the remains of the Edwin Fox, but otherwise it looks about the same as I remember from 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Spotted this in the window of one of the ‘waterfront’ restaurants; A much more professional looking sign than the handwritten notes of yore. (It’s one of the places facing the sea, though there’s a road and an expanse of park before you actually get to the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The weather picked up over the course of the afternoon, because of course it did, and at one point there was heavy rain & the landscape across the water vanished. The rain, fortunately, was gone by the morning, but the wind remained, so I was expecting an interesting<\/em> ferry crossing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On my last stay here, there was a cat who turned up in my room, or was already there when I arrived, but not this time. To be fair, that was in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was, however, this alternative cat sleeping in the most inconvenient place possible when I went to check out & get some breakfast. (This place does scones with the free\/inclusive breakfast)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yes, I stopped to pet the cat before doing anything else. It was very asleep, so gave the little “prrrt” noise of a cat who isn’t sure why they’re being woken up, and wants you to make it worth their time. The petting seemed to do the job, and it went back to sleep again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I got a little bit rained upon during the walk to the ferry terminal, but only for about 10 seconds, so … No big deal. Much like the train, they do luggage weigh-in for the ferry, so it must be a baggage handler safety thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It’s only a few hours, so while you can<\/strong> get a cabin, and there’s a premium lounge, I didn’t really see the point. I did make sure to spot the seasickness bags, just in case the signs in the terminal saying that it was a calm crossing were wrong. Or lies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Very calm going through the sounds, as you’d expect; The most disturbance came from the maneuvering through the waterways, because it’s a pretty complex route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Eventually we got to the Tasman Sea, where gigantic waves failed to appear. The worst was a slow fore+aft rocking motion over several seconds, and an even slower side-to-side, neither of which were enough to disturb a cup of coffee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wellington Central, when we got there, was a little different, in that it was raining sideways. The puddles looked like they were being hit with a leaf blower when gusts hit, with the water racing uphill, and while there was no significant effort in walking against the wind, there was some definite resistance there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, so I’m starting this one the day before, with the arrival into Picton. I could have booked the ferry for that afternoon, or even that evening, but I wasn’t sure how much wiggle room was needed between train & ferry, and I kind of like Picton, so I stayed the night at a place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[99,103,104],"class_list":["post-4785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sabbatical","tag-ferry","tag-picton","tag-wellington"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3O6N9-1fb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4785"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4800,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4785\/revisions\/4800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}