Cromwell

Reid and I headed through to Central Otago for a short stay between Christmas and New Year. I found this great little cottage (the Burn Cottage Retreat) just out of Cromwell. It was really cosy and well appointed. It had everything we needed in the little kitchen and the setting was beautiful ... not to mention the garden where we could pick veggies for our dinner!

The view from the kitchen in our cottage



Lavender outside the cottage





Me collecting potatoes from the garden for dinner



Typical Central Otago landscape



Cooling off down by the lake





Jackson Lookout - overlooking the meeting of the Kawarau and Clutha rivers.



We walked up the Old Reservoir track from the Jackson Lookout for views over Cromwell





Lunch at the Gibbston Valley vineyard. The setting was beautiful, we had a lovely time, but the food was a bit average and the service was pretty poor. It wasn't their fault that two car accidents had occurred just before we arrived, but they forgot to take our order. Then Reid ordered a starter and main, which they bought out at the same time!! I was going to have a dessert but they never came back to our table so I decided to leave it ... I was pretty full anyway.



Wandered through Historic Cromwell - they have lots of old buildings with original equipment that Reid could play with ... including this old printing press



We attempted to have a picnic by the lake for dinner, but it was just a hilarious disaster!
We forgot the salt and salad dressing - for Reid this meant dinner was ruined! Because we also forgot a bottle opener, Reid popped the bottle top off with a knife. On any other day this would have worked, but this time it took the lip of the bottle off instead of the lid. We left it too late to go to the lake so the sun had disappeared and it was a bit cold. But the clincher was the wind had picked up, so we were getting blasted with gravel dust! By about half way through eating we had to pack up and head back to the cottage!! I couldn't stop laughing!!



We went for a walk through the old mining sluicings - where the area had been water blasted for gold. It does make for a really interesting landscape!