Sveatherston

Sven Olsen’s Brutal Canadian Love Saga are back, and this time they’re playing Featherston! Featherston is a small town in the Wairarapa, part of the Greater Wellington conurbation. We drove over the Remutaka hills to get there on a Saturday afternoon – dropping Nicola at the venue for rehearsal whilst I went onward to book into our accommodation at the Martinborough Hotel.

In the evening I drove back to Featherston – about 18km – so that we could have an early dinner at Brac & Bow, the main restaurant in Featherston. Whilst they were pretty prompt with service for cocktails and starters, the mains took a long time to come out so we were a bit rushed at the end as Nicola had to get back to set up in the Kiwi Hall. I wandered over a little later and staked my place in the second row.

The concert was free/koha, and the hall was full. Featherston isn’t just full of knitting and retired architects (possible future song title?), and the hall was buzzing. They played some of their classics, as well as using the “N” word – New Material – to celebrate life in Wellington and New Zealand, with such songs as Kron of Hastings (“he tagged the rest home, and the Countdown, and the town hall, and the flowerpots”), Brobdignagian Nightmare (about Nelson’s clock tower), Tasered At The Chicken Joint, Another Ratshit Night In Paradise, and many more.

After a post-gig night of debauchery driving back to Martinborough, we rose the next day for a leisurely exploration of vineyards. Starting at the Library, to get a list of which ones were open in off-season (quite a few!), we planned a route, then completely failed to stick to it. Instead we started off in Tiwaiwaka Vineyard, which hasn’t actually been open to the public on the occasions we’ve visited before, but now is (I believe it used to be by appointment only). It’s a small husband-and-wife operation, and we chatted to the owner, Mort, about his wines and wine in general as we ran through a tasting of seven different wines from the rosé, dry semillon, chardonnays, merlot and late harvest semillon.

We missed the next stop and went straight to Tirohana, where we tasted wines and stopped for lunch. The restaurant here offers either two course or three-course meals, but we weren’t in the mood for that, so we broke all the rules and ordered four starters to have tapas-style instead.

In the evening we dined in-house, but weren’t actually all that hungry, so didn’t take advantage of the culinary excellence on offer. The restaurant, Union Square, is run by the same people who used to run Zibbibo in Wellington (long since closed), so we missed out a bit there. Oh well, next time…

On Monday morning we went for breakfast at the Martinborough Village Café, largely as it seemed to be the only place open…Martinborough is not exactly a hive of industry and is mostly dependent on the wine trade, which comes alive at the weekends and summertime. We stopped on the way back at C’est Cheese but unfortunately they were out of the Mount Eliza Red Leicester that I wanted, and were waiting for a new delivery in the spring. We bought a couple of other cheeses then drove back across the Remutaka hills to Wellington.

 

Wings Over Wairarapa

Wings Over Wairarapa is an annual air show held in Masterton, where planes new and old, and other military equipment, are on show. It’s held over the weekend of the Wellington Anniversary holiday, which this year falls on 19^th January. We’d decided to keep an eye on the weather, as the initial forecast (10 days ago) was for rain, followed by rain, and more rain. However, given the Met Service’s noted reliability on long-range forecasts (not good), by the time the event came round the forecast was for sunshine, sunshine, and more sunshine; and being in the Wairarapa, notably higher temperatures were expected than prevail in Wellington (it’s not called “the coolest little capital in the world” for nothing – it’s always a few degrees cooler than everywhere else) – hitting around 30°. The main attractions are flying displays and old planes, and rides are available in a variety of aircraft (including a spitfire for the princely sum of $3,750 for 20 minutes – you can get to London for that price, but not in that time).

We were up early as I wanted to get of Wellington out by 9:00 am, as it takes a couple of hours to get to Masterton. As it happened, we appeared to be making good time, although there was noticeably more traffic going over the Rimutaka Hill Road than we'd normally expect to see. We decided to stop off for a coffee in Greytown, and this may have been a mistake, as traffic was almost at a standstill when we left Greytown and through Carterton. We arrived at around 11:30. The shows had started at 11:00am so we missed the beginning.

No matter. Things were soon in full force, with demonstration flying of jets, helicopters and propeller planes. There was also a collection of Bren carriers on display, as well as other military vehicles. We grabbed a light lunch of venison burger from the food and wine village, where a number of stalls served slightly more upmarket foods than the standard hotdog stalls (one of them was run by Zibibbo, but I didn't actually fancy anything on their menu). We met up with Nick, one of our dancing chums, who was there with family, and also bumped into Andy, a work colleague. All this being arranged beforehand - we were expecting to see them.

The displays continued all afternoon. We took a quick detour round to see some of the static displays of WW1 and WW2 aircraft, and also had a look inside a modern helicopter - one of which had been doing the flight display earlier, demonstrating how they were used in a "hot" battlefield situation.

Talking of hot, yes, it reached a blistering 30° in the afternoon, and we spent a little time tracking down some sunblock (as we'd foolishly left ours in the car). We found some at the information tent.

A lot of the people there were far better prepared than we were, with wind shelters, gazebos, table and chairs with their picnics. We'd come "as is" expecting to pick up all we needed when we were there, and managed pretty well with the exception of having somewhere to sit down. Next time we'll bear that in mind.

The heat and the walking around were eventually getting to us, and we decided to skip the final event of the day - a WW2 dogfight - and try and beat the traffic home. We left at around 3:30, and, amazingly, there were still people coming in! Presumably just to see that last event.

We got home and washed the Wairarapa dust from our feet. There was a lot of it!