Lake Rotohiti to Nelson

Day 4: It pissed it down like you've never seen before, it was as grey as a grey thing that was shaded in grey, it was horrible and wet and even more grey.  And I was driving, so no photographs were taken of this particularly drippy day on the NZ trip.

However, it had a happy ending as the Rough Guide to New Zealand came up trumps, not for the first or last time.  It guided us to the Sprig and Fern in Nelson which had lovely pints brewed by a local company.  They had nice fires going in what was apparently a converted villa in a normal suburban street.  We were informed that there are five Sprig and Ferns in the area.

Nelson is a city so after three of four jars we sought the solace of an Indian restaurant where a fine meal was consumed with plenty left over for doggy bags.

This, if I remember rightly, was the day some sad and lonely road worker shook his head at me in the middle of nowhere.  It was wet and grey, as I may have mentioned, and this bloke was in the middle of a forest on a road having to do the old stop and go sign duty.  He was having a mare with his sign as the wind kept blowing it over.  He held us up for five minutes, looking like the grumpiest man on Earth, before finally turning the sign around to green.  He then moved over to the other side of the road just as I had moved in that direction, so he shook his head at me.  I, being me, wound my window down as I approached him and enquired "Got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning?" to which his reply was so full of rude content that it won't be printed here.