Meeting Mr. T in Marlborough
“Welcome to the second Whitest High street in Britain” said our friend T as he gave me the warm embrace that only a huge Fijian can. What he’d actually said is the ‘second widest high street in Britain” that’s Marlborough’s big claim to fame and it is actually very wide - allowing for everyone to park their Land-Rovers neatly in the middle of it whilst they pick up Tarquin from prep school and head over to Waitrose for a bottle of plonk. There is an eclectic mix of styles of architecture and a lively vibe (bank holiday weekend) as karaoke wailing and live bands noise spills out from pubs full of people who all seem to know each other.
We headed to Pino's for an Italian and T explained that this is a town of Olympian standard horse riders. As I scoffed a Mushroom risotto T was pointing them out to us; ‘she rides for Canada, but Canadians can’t ride horses and he’s on the Olympic NZ team’ …it’s another characteristic of a corner of the world that we would otherwise have never have know about.
After dinner we went to the pub to fail at a pub quiz before the novelty of a night out without booze wore off on me the designated driver and so we headed back to our boat moored in a creepily dark forest right at the mouth of Bruce Tunnel.
I clutched onto Chris, pupils wide, weak iPhone torch just about lighting the way and stared up at the creaking trees - the barely definable outline of the dark pine against the inky sky. Not another boat, or road about. Total, eerie, silence.
I was so grateful to step onto the boat, and fill the space with reassuring warmth, light, and noise before heading to bed only to wake an hour later- launching myself with sweaty abandon into the bathroom - desperately scraping the pitch black walls for the light switch and emptying every grain of previously digested risotto back out into my Thetford cassette in cold sobriety. My face was an inch away from what is essentially a bucket of raw sewage, and the hot sweats started to cool and I found myself freezing and naked on the bathroom floor. Furious that Chris managed to sleep through my retching so peacefully, I called for him to get me the bucket as a better alternative. He grumbled about having to go outside - produced orange bucket and went back to bed. The nausea passed thankfully without any other symptoms (not sure how I would have handled a both ends scenario). Fuck knows what that was about.
So that was my brief experience of Marlborough on a dark and rainy bank holiday weekend. The town is large enough to provide a good stop for a couple of days if you need to stock up, and if you’re not a woos like me you’ll probably like mooring up just outside the Bruce Tunnel. If you do, it’s a 10 minute drive to Marlborough where you’ll find clothes shops, laundrette, dry cleaners, plenty of pubs, Italian, Indian restaurant, and a Post Office.
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| Fair few old flagstoned allies lead off the main highstreet |
We headed to Pino's for an Italian and T explained that this is a town of Olympian standard horse riders. As I scoffed a Mushroom risotto T was pointing them out to us; ‘she rides for Canada, but Canadians can’t ride horses and he’s on the Olympic NZ team’ …it’s another characteristic of a corner of the world that we would otherwise have never have know about.
After dinner we went to the pub to fail at a pub quiz before the novelty of a night out without booze wore off on me the designated driver and so we headed back to our boat moored in a creepily dark forest right at the mouth of Bruce Tunnel.
I clutched onto Chris, pupils wide, weak iPhone torch just about lighting the way and stared up at the creaking trees - the barely definable outline of the dark pine against the inky sky. Not another boat, or road about. Total, eerie, silence.
I was so grateful to step onto the boat, and fill the space with reassuring warmth, light, and noise before heading to bed only to wake an hour later- launching myself with sweaty abandon into the bathroom - desperately scraping the pitch black walls for the light switch and emptying every grain of previously digested risotto back out into my Thetford cassette in cold sobriety. My face was an inch away from what is essentially a bucket of raw sewage, and the hot sweats started to cool and I found myself freezing and naked on the bathroom floor. Furious that Chris managed to sleep through my retching so peacefully, I called for him to get me the bucket as a better alternative. He grumbled about having to go outside - produced orange bucket and went back to bed. The nausea passed thankfully without any other symptoms (not sure how I would have handled a both ends scenario). Fuck knows what that was about.
So that was my brief experience of Marlborough on a dark and rainy bank holiday weekend. The town is large enough to provide a good stop for a couple of days if you need to stock up, and if you’re not a woos like me you’ll probably like mooring up just outside the Bruce Tunnel. If you do, it’s a 10 minute drive to Marlborough where you’ll find clothes shops, laundrette, dry cleaners, plenty of pubs, Italian, Indian restaurant, and a Post Office.
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