Grand Tour South VII

The forecast wasn’t wrong, we left Arrowtown in sunshine but as we approached Queenstown we could see a rain squall coming across Lake Wakatipu. The rain and wind arrived about 30 seconds after we did so we took refuge in a café and changed out plans. We were booked into a campsite at Te Anau but the thought of setting up camp in the rain and a forecast of more bad weather was too much. We phoned our bed and breakfast stop in Invercargill and asked if we could arrive a day early. They said yes so we left the traffic madness of Queenstown as hundreds of 4WDs and camper vans filled with bored families descended on the town looking for something to do. We didn’t get much of a view of the lake or the mountains as the rain got steadily heavier before easing just after Lumsden where we stopped for the local delicacy of cheese rolls. There were heavy threatening clouds over Invercargill as we rolled into town but at least the rain held off. I pulled into the driveway of our B&B to the sight of an Alfa 33. It turned out that the owner of Burtonwood B&B was club member who also had a 155 and a Fiat Bambina. He was mourning the loss of his second155 that met a messy end after an encounter with a bridge. The B&B was a lovely Edwardian brick house that had been redecorated and fitted with modern en suite bathrooms. I managed to visit Supercheap Autos and get a new set of wipers for the Spider. They were horrible bulky black ugly units with “aerodynamic” wings to supposedly help force the blades onto the screen at high speed. They would have looked at home on Starsky and Hutch’s car but at least they fitted and although the new blades now squeaked and skidded across the screen, there were 2 of them and they worked.