The morning came and the weather was terrible, so it was time for plan B and miss out Abel and head straight to Nelson. We'd managed to catch the weather forcast the day before and it had given snow for the high ground. I thought we'd got over all the high, winding roads but no. There was yet another mountain to get over and this one had snow all over it! Fortunately New Zealanders cope a hell of a lot better than us English. They had a police car at each end of the pass and a few in the middle for good measure. Gritters and snow ploughs every five minutes kept the road down to tarmac and Irene cruised straight over. Once we got off the mountain it was plain sailing to Nelson, where we found our selves a camp site and nipped into town. We had a walk around the town which was quite a bit smaller than we'd imagined, seeing as it once was the largest city in the south island. After a few chores and a trip to the cinema we went back to the camper for the night, where I cooked us a dinner of sausages with onion, garlic and mint mash.