King's Birthday 29 May to 1 June 2026

Leader: Brandon Holman

Five of us left on the 3:30pm ferry for Picton and settled into our hostel that evening. On Saturday we picked up our Rav4 hire vehicle and started the long drive to Mount Stokes over 2 hours away, along very slow and winding roads.

Surprisingly there were 4 cars already in the car park when we arrived, and we soon overtook a family with very small kids on the way up. Unlike the day before when we had seen the mountains clearly silhouetted from the ferry, the weather had changed and now Mount Stokes (1203m) had it’s head in the clouds. We stopped for lunch on the way up as we didn’t start walking until 11:15pm, arriving at the top close to 2:00pm. After taking pictures at the summit trig we were lucky to get a break in the cloud and saw a view of Kenepuru Sound briefly. The views would have been fantastic the day before! We got back to the vehicle at 4:30pm and drove back to Picton.

On Sunday we enjoyed a gentler walk along the peninsular called The Snout near Picton, and then drove to Blenheim in the afternoon to see the Omaha aircraft museum which had great dioramas of WW1 aircraft arranged by Peter Jackson's crew. The predicted rain set in by 4:00pm, and we enjoyed going out for a meal in Picton that evening.

Our ferry on Monday was not until 2:15pm, so we had a leisurely visit to the Edwin Fox museum, holding the only 19th century immigrant ship to have survived in the world, but due to a recent inspection of ‘Health and Safety’ we were not allowed to go on it, having to suffice with the video and artefacts displayed in the purpose-built museum.

Those on the trip were:

Brandon Holman, Craig Watkin, Wayne Williams, Yingjun Shelton, Phoebe Wang

Currently there is no photo album for this trip.