Geraldine

Bruce and I ended up spending only one night in Timaru, where we visited our best man Bob and his wife Vivenne. It was a great catch up and good to see Bob so enthusiastic about his new home and the renovations he is undertaking. He looks well and is promising to come and visit us some time soon.

After a night spent parked in his driveway, we decided to go inland again before heading back up towards the north. Our targetted town was Geraldine, and we had a few stops scheduled here. The first was Barkers, who make a range of jams, chutneys and sauces. They pride themselves on using local ingredients, and they have opened a big new outlet shop and cafe since we were last here, so we headed there for some lunch. Bruce also wanted to see if they had any tomato chilli jam as he had eaten the contents of both of the jars we brought with us. They didn’t but we decided to try some of their capsicum jam to see if it could compensate (nice but not the same!).

We then headed on to the Geraldine Brewery that we had visited previously, that had a Blackberry Porter dark beer that Bruce really liked the last time we were here. Unfortunately we had no luck there either, so came away empty handed.

Our last stop was to a little transport museum, and what a gem that turned out to be.

They had some very old cars that I had not seen before, but what really took my fancy was a home built motor home, built by John Britten of motorcycle racing fame. It was a beautiful specimen, made primarily of wood, with wicker storage baskets. The workmanship was superb.

The inside was also beautifully crafted with a velvet couch, ceramic basin and a wood burner for cooking and heat.

There was not a lot of room inside, but the couch clearly unfolded to make a bed. There would only be room for a couple though, no kids.

Apparently this motorhome was to be trucked to Oamaru in the next few days to be exhibited at the NZMCA National Rally. So glad we got to see it first.

There were lots of other gems in this museum, such as early cinema equipment, and lots of information about how it was used and the problems that arose. I never realised how combustable early film was – so much so that it had to be stored in concrete bunkers with chimneys in case it spontaneously combusted while being stored.

On this trip we did not stay in Geraldine, but headed for Ashburton instead. However, we are really glad we took the time to have a little look.