Almost everything written about ground transport out of Picton points south. Down the coast to Kaikoura and on to Christchurch, or inland to a Blenheim winery for the afternoon. Both are real jobs and both are well covered. What is not covered is the direction a surprising number of itineraries actually need, which is west and north towards Havelock, Nelson and Golden Bay. That gap matters, because a chauffeur Picton booking heading west is where visitors plan in the most expensive mistake of their trip: they look at the map, see 110km, and allow ninety minutes for it.
Two roads west, and only one of them is quick
There are two ways out of Picton towards Nelson, and they converge at Havelock.
The first is Queen Charlotte Drive, which leaves Picton along the waterfront and follows the edge of the Sound through Governors Bay and Ngakuta Bay before dropping over Cullen Point into Havelock. It is about 35km. On paper that is half an hour. In practice allow something closer to an hour in a car, and meaningfully more in a van or a coach.
The second runs south on SH1 to Blenheim, roughly 28km and about twenty-five minutes, then turns northwest onto SH6 and runs up the Wairau valley through Renwick before coming over to Havelock. It covers more ground. It is consistently faster.
From Havelock both routes share the same SH6 to Nelson, roughly 75km over the Rai Saddle, the Whangamoa and the Gentle Annie. That section is winding in its own right and is not quick at any time of year. Total Picton to Nelson by either route is approximately 110 to 125km, and the honest allowance is two hours and upwards, not ninety minutes.
Queen Charlotte Drive in operational terms
Queen Charlotte Drive is one of the best short drives in the country. It is also narrow, almost continuously cambered, and has very little in the way of shoulder or passing opportunity. There are stretches where two full-width vehicles meeting on a blind corner means one of them reverses.
For a sedan with two passengers who want the view, that is a feature. For a van carrying luggage it is slow. For a coach it is the wrong road, and Legacy will not put one on it to save distance on a timetable. Add a motorhome convoy in February, or a cyclist on a section with no shoulder, and the time you thought you were saving is gone.
That is the honest position: the scenic road is worth taking when the drive is part of the day, and worth avoiding when the drive is a transfer. A chauffeur Picton job with a flight, a meeting or a check-in at the far end goes inland. A chauffeur Picton job where the Sound is the point goes along the water, with time allowed for the Cullen Point lookout and for stopping when someone asks to.
Planning a chauffeur Picton transfer around the sailing
The other half of this is the ferry. Both operators berth in Picton within a few minutes of each other, the Interislander at its terminal on the eastern side of the harbour and Bluebridge at the Waitohi wharf, and a Cook Strait crossing from Wellington runs a little over three hours.
What catches people out is disembarkation. Foot passengers come off reasonably promptly. Vehicles do not, and a busy sailing can add twenty to thirty minutes to the moment you actually reach the forecourt. Sailings also cluster, so several hundred people hit Picton's small town centre at once.
Planned properly it is a non-event: the vehicle is already on the forecourt, the driver has the sailing's actual arrival rather than its scheduled one, and the group walks off and leaves. Legacy runs it that way because the alternative on a ferry day is a group standing on the wharf in a southerly while someone makes phone calls. Where the onward leg is tight, we will usually recommend the inland road regardless of how good the weather looks, because Queen Charlotte Drive cannot absorb a late sailing and SH6 can.
Havelock and Nelson as end points
Havelock is roughly halfway and is a genuine end point in its own right, not just a junction. It is the access town for the Pelorus Sound, which means water transfers, lodge arrivals and charter departures with their own fixed times. A water departure does not wait, so the drive has to be planned to the boat rather than the boat to the drive.
Nelson is the more common destination, and from there the itinerary usually keeps going: Motueka, the Abel Tasman trailheads at Marahau and Kaiteriteri, or over the Takaka Hill into Golden Bay. Those are their own legs with their own timings, and we have written about them separately in the Nelson Abel Tasman access piece. The point for a Picton arrival is simply that Nelson is rarely the end of the day. If the group has a trailhead or a water taxi booked for the same afternoon, the sailing you choose in Wellington determines whether that works.
BHE as the air alternative
Blenheim's airport, BHE, sits about 30km south of Picton, about half an hour by road. It is the regional air access point for Marlborough, and for some itineraries it removes the problem altogether: fly into BHE, pick up the inland SH6 at Blenheim, and the Queen Charlotte Drive question never arises. It works the same way in reverse for anyone who would otherwise be driving the Sound road against the clock.
Where the ferry is fixed, BHE is still useful as the escape valve. A cancelled sailing in a Cook Strait blow is not rare, and knowing in advance which end of the itinerary can absorb that is the difference between a rearranged afternoon and a lost day.
How we plan it
A private chauffeur Picton movement is quoted as a planned leg, not a meter run. Legacy uses employed, uniformed drivers rather than subcontractors, so the person meeting the sailing is the person who was briefed on it. The fleet is owned European and runs from sedans through vans to coaches, which is what allows an honest answer about which road a particular group should take. Sailings and connecting flights are monitored in real time, dispatch is digital, and because Legacy covers both Picton and Nelson as well as more than fifteen other New Zealand locations, the handover at the far end is internal rather than a second operator's problem.
If you are building a Marlborough or Nelson itinerary around a sailing, the details worth sending us are the sailing time, the hard commitments at the far end and the group size. Coverage is at wearelegacy.co.nz and on the Locations page, and more route writing sits on the Blog.
Written by Raewyn McCardell, Legacy EPT