Illustrative route line through real stops, not to scale. The Picton-Nelson-Blenheim triangle, plus the Golden Bay outlier.
"Top of the South" gets sold online as one road trip, but it's really three towns close enough together to treat as a single base, plus one genuine outlier that needs its own plan. Picton, Nelson and Blenheim form a rough triangle at the top of the South Island: none of the three legs takes much over two hours, so most visitors can pick one corner, sleep there for several nights, and day-trip the other two rather than repacking the car every morning. This page is a planning-level piece, not a full route in its own right: its job is helping you work out how to split your time across the region before you go looking at the detailed writeups on the Marlborough wine trail and Nelson's food and arts scene, which cover each sub-region properly and aren't repeated here. Golden Bay, over the Tākaka Hill, is the exception to the triangle: it looks close on a map and behaves like a separate trip once you're actually driving it.
The triangle: Picton, Nelson and Blenheim
Picton to Nelson runs about 100km on SH6 and takes close to two hours behind the wheel, most of it tracing the edge of the Marlborough Sounds before the road turns inland past Havelock, per the AA's time and distance calculator. Nelson to Blenheim covers similar ground in the other direction and comes in just under two hours as well. The short leg is Blenheim to Picton: about 30km and roughly half an hour on SH1, which is also why most self-drive itineraries treat Picton and Blenheim as effectively one stop rather than two separate bases. Put those three numbers together and the shape of a sensible Top of the South trip becomes obvious: base around Blenheim or Picton if wine is the priority (Renwick, not Blenheim itself, is the better base for the cellar doors, covered properly in the Marlborough Wine Train Mixtape), or base in Nelson if food, galleries and a Saturday market matter as much as the driving. Either way, the other two corners of the triangle are close enough to visit as day trips without changing hotels.
Golden Bay is the outlier, not a fourth corner of the triangle
Almost every "Top of the South" itinerary online eventually tries to fold Golden Bay into the same loop as Picton, Nelson and Blenheim, and that's where the plan usually falls apart. Golden Bay sits on the far side of the Tākaka Hill on SH60, a winding 51.5km stretch of state highway climbing and descending between Riwaka and Tākaka. From Nelson, that's a realistic 2.5 hours of driving, and it's the shortest way in. From Picton, the same trip runs closer to 3 hours 40 minutes each way, because you're first covering the Picton to Nelson leg and then adding the Tākaka Hill climb on top of it. That's the actual reason to skip attempting Golden Bay as a day trip from Picton specifically: a there-and-back day from Picton means well over seven hours of driving before you've spent any real time in Golden Bay, on a road that stays slow even once you're past Riwaka. The hill itself is in solid shape these days: SH60 was fully repaired and restored to two lanes after extensive damage from Cyclone Gita in February 2018, a rebuild RNZ reported at around NZ$28 million and nearly four years to finish, and NZTA's project page confirms the road now runs open all day and night, weather and slips aside. The repair means the road is safe and sealed; it doesn't mean it's fast, and treating it as a quick detour from Picton, rather than Nelson, is the mistake, not the road itself.
So which corner do you actually base in?
If wine is the reason for the trip, Blenheim or Renwick wins, with Picton as the ferry-day stop either side. If food, galleries and a slower pace matter as much as the wine, Nelson wins, and Blenheim becomes the day trip instead. If Golden Bay is genuinely on the list, don't try to squeeze it into whichever base you've already picked. It works better as its own separate leg with its own overnight, tacked onto a Nelson base rather than treated as a long day out from anywhere else in the triangle.
Base in one corner of the Picton, Nelson and Blenheim triangle and day-trip the other two if you've got three or four days; give Golden Bay a night of its own out of Nelson rather than folding it into the same loop.
The bit nobody publishes: plenty of people build their Golden Bay visit around a single long day out of Picton, on the logic that it's "only" a few hours each way. What actually happens is the return leg lands late, in the dark, on a winding hill road with no streetlighting, after a day that already started with a two-hour drive just to reach the base of the hill. The honest fix costs a night's accommodation most people didn't originally budget for, not extra fuel: build Golden Bay in from Nelson with its own overnight, rather than trying to save a night by doing it there-and-back from further away.
This triangle framing is worth using if you've got three to five days and want to base once rather than pack the car daily, whether that's Picton or Blenheim for the wine trail, or Nelson for food and arts. See the Marlborough Wine Train Mixtape and the Nelson Food Trail Mixtape for the depth this page deliberately doesn't repeat. It's not worth treating Golden Bay as a fourth corner of the same triangle: give it a genuine overnight out of Nelson, or look at the Golden Bay Explorer Mixtape and build a separate day or two around it, instead of squeezing it into a day that already has hours of driving built in before you've started.
Can I do Golden Bay as a day trip from Nelson?
Yes, but treat it as a full day, not a half. It's about 2.5 hours each way over the Tākaka Hill on SH60, so a Nelson-based day trip means five hours of driving around whatever time you actually spend in Golden Bay. An overnight in Golden Bay works better for most people than a there-and-back, especially if Wharariki Beach or Farewell Spit are also on the list, since both add further driving beyond Tākaka itself.
Is the Tākaka Hill road safe after the 2018 slip damage?
Yes. The road was fully repaired and restored to two lanes in a project RNZ reported at around NZ$28 million, and NZTA's own project page confirms it now runs open 24 hours a day. What hasn't changed is the driving experience: it's still a winding 51.5km climb and descent, so it remains slower than the straight-line distance on a map suggests, repairs or not.