Our caravan club spent the weekend at Martinborough, that South Wairarapa town founded by John Martin, (1822-92), an Irish immigrant who purchased the large Wairarapa sheep station "Huangarua" in 1879. This was subdivided into 593 sections to create the a town. The street names such as Venice, Panama, Suez and New York and the central square and streets laid out in a Union Jack pattern, were inspired from a world tour John Martin undertook. These days Martinborough is well known for producing award winning wines. The hot summer conditions together with dry stony soil has proved to be excellent for growing grapes and the region is dotted with boutique wineries. Some of the vineyards have powered turbines to move the air around on frosty mornings.
Our Saturday evening get-together was quite intriguing. We had been asked to provide our choice of bananas, tangerines, strawberries, or marshmallows which would be used to make us all a shared dessert. So on Saturday evening we all gathered together in the camp dining room to see what Kath and Pete had prepared for us. Set out on the table were dishes with chopped fruit, bowls of marshmallows, and two bowls of warmed chocolate. We were having a fondue party!!
Tea lights burning under the bowls kept the chocolate at just the right consistency. I couldn't decide which was nicer, the normal chocolate, or the white chocolate flavoured with Kirch. As we nibbled on chocolate coated fruit and marshmallows Pete played his musical competition to test our brains. It was reasonably easy to remember the song titles, but remembering the artist’s names was quite a bit harder. Still, we all did very well, and had fun singing along to the songs while the other campers in the dining room looked on in amusement. Or perhaps that should be, in amazement! It was certainly a great night.
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