Monday 2 March 2026 – Most tourists travellers arriving on the South Island at Picton* and looking to explore it tend to choose between two common itinerary options: head south to Kaikoura and Christchurch, then down the east coast; or head west to Nelson, Abel Tasman and then down the west coast. We are doing neither of these; or possibly both, depending on how you look at these things. We certainly wanted to visit Kaikoura and Christchurch, but equally we didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to meet Eve and Bill again. That’s why we included Mārahau. Our day with Eve and Bill was lovely, but we had one more day before we had to move on, so Jane did her usual traveller incantations, seeking to magic up something interesting for us to do. As ever, she did an outstanding job and we ended up spending the day around the city of Nelson, about an hour’s drive away, doing a couple of things that would be considered standard for us, but also a couple that wouldn’t.

As a great example of a non-standard activity for seasoned travellers such as Jane and me (modestly polishes nails on Rohan fleece), this does not immediately come to mind.

“Yes!” I never thought we’d cry, “let’s visit a peanut butter factory!”

But we did. And it was splendid fun.

Pic’s Peanut Butter is named after the founder Bruce “Pic” Picot. You can read why he got into Peanut Butter here, but rest assured that he is a Peanut Butter nut. He reckons his product is the best in the world; in New Zealand, the company’s market share is 41%, so there’s credibility in what he says, though Manilife might have a word or two to say on the matter. Whatever, he has created a factory which is also a retail and education centre, which offers tours, so Jane snagged a couple of tickets for us and we set off with plenty of time to get there for an 1130 tour. (Courtesy of a hallucination on the part of our TomTom satnav, we arrived just in time and panting only slightly.)

The tour is hosted by a very lively lady called Tania,

who spent about 20 minutes explaining all things peanut butter. She started with talking about where in the world Pic’s does business, and then invited the guests on the tour to place a red star where they were from. It was quite the international audience.

She then explained about the peanuts (not a nut, but a legume, as any fule kno). They use only hi-oleic nuts, a special variety only grown in a few places round the world; theirs come from South America. Hi-oleic nuts contain a higher percentage of oleic acid, a monounsaturated fat, than regular peanuts and have lower saturated and polyunsaturated fat levels; this means they are healthier, and no additional oils are added during the production. The nuts arrive naked, having been shelled and stripped when picked, and then go into a roaster

before heading to the grinder.  Crunchy peanut butter is ground once, smooth twice, and a little salt is added before the butter heads to the various bottling lines. They also make a consistency between the two, which they call “smoochy”.

We were lucky to see the lines in action, as at midday the factory floor emptied – lunch break, presumably. Tania gave us 15 or so minutes to wander the upper floor, where we could, for example, see the original roaster that Pic used when he started as a cottage industry – a stainless steel concrete mixer, with a gas burner underneath!

There are plenty of info boards about the company and the products (natch) but also some with some very left-field assertions.

• Peanut butter is useful in removing obstinately sticky labels
• Frying a blob of peanut butter removes fried fish smells from your kitchen
• Pic’s peanut butter catches 20% more pests than any other brand, so it’s popular for trapping and removing invasive creatures

There’s also an opportunity for people to make their own peanut butter – on the Peanut Butter Bicycle! Your intrepid reporter had a go.

Then it was time for a tasting session

and the group got samples of normal and chocolate peanut butter to taste – and also a combination we’d never come across before and which intrigued Jane greatly: salt and pepper peanut butter.

Tania made sure our tour was fun and engaging, and we left with two free jars of the product. Since we were down to our last few dozen teabags of Twinings Finest Earl Grey (uh-oh!), we called in at a passing Woolworth’s to restock, and look what else we found!

A peanut butter factory is deffo a left-field activity, and Jane had found something else somewhat unusual and maybe unexpected in a New Zealand provincial city:

The Nelson Classic Car Museum. This was amazing – the museum has over 150 classic cars on display and wandering among them is a wonderful experience. If you like that sort of thing, of course. There are various halls and sections within halls:

There are some unusual cars among them

and one that had a special nostalgia for me: a Wolseley 6/110. Dad had one of them, back in the 1960s.

I’m also taken by bonnet ornaments:

Such fun!

Also: photographic nerdery alert! Here’s a great example of how phones can be better than dedicated cameras. Between two of the halls were some display cases with model cars – Dinky, Corgi, Matchbox, that sort of thing. Photographing the cases with a normal camera was basically impossible because of the reflections. However, I knew of a mobile phone trick, so I took a picture with my phone.

The Special Power that I knew about was that there’s a facility within the phone’s own Gallery app called “remove reflections”. The power of this is quite remarkable, achievable with a single edit.

(I have used photo processing software as well, but that is to present correct horizontals and verticals (thank you DxO for PhotoLab with Viewpoint), something my phone can’t match.)

After these two activities, it was time to do some more conventional things.  So we went for a walk. Obviously.

We didn’t have a huge amount of time, but there was a handy hike up a hill just outside Nelson, with the prospect of a decent view over the city, so we headed to the start. It has an unusual destination,

and is a short but steep hike up a decent path.

In the interests of providing data (and, at the same time, demonstrating how I suffer for you), I measured the slope at 15° at its steepest point. That’s one in six by one way of looking at it, or 1 in 4 if you’re a mathematician and understand trig. In practical terms, we ascended 127 metres vertical in one kilometre, in a place called the Botanical Reserve. On the way up we could see that the view was likely to be rather good

and indeed it was.

 

There’s a monument there

with a needle pointing at a plaque.

It’s not really the Centre of New Zealand – that actually lies about 50km south west, on a golf course – but it was used as the central point for surveys in the 1800s.

The final visit of the day was to the cathedral; we’re not religious but we do like churches.

It has an impressive frontage

and a calm interior

distinguished by some spectacular modern stained glass.

We noticed, on exiting the cathedral, a plaque whose longevity might be cut severely short in the coming days or weeks….

One thing that is (literally and figuratively) striking about the cathedral is its spire, which we didn’t get a good view of. Since I didn’t bring my drone, I borrowed footage from a screen that was on display inside.

Many thanks to Make The Grade for the image. Lovely video, guys.

So that was our day in Nelson – a very unusual and very good one it was, too. The only thing for it then was to head back to our accommodation and test out that salt and pepper peanut butter. It’s very peppery; in our view it needs a bit more salt. It goes very well with jam or with tomatoes, which is apparently Pic’s favourite.

Tomorrow we leave Abel Tasman and head over the hills and, well, not very far away; we’ll get back to Picton and then head south to Kaikoura, thus getting on to the usual eastern route southwards. We have some interesting accommodation booked in Kaikoura…

 

*  Jane has just read that severe winds have resulted in the cancellation of InterIslander ferries today and probably tomorrow as well. My heart goes out to those people affected by this, as the ferries are fully booked and it’s difficult to know what the travel options would be under these circumstances. Gosh, we were lucky.

*  And let’s hope our luck continues to hold. We’re due to fly back via Dubai in three weeks’ time….