Cycle: 51km

We made the most of having a lovely place to spend an hour or two and had a relaxed morning getting ready for our next journey. We had some of the fresh bread included in the hostel price adn sorted out any 'North Island paperwork'(maps etc) to send to Scott's friend Sarah in Wellington to collect on our way back up. Scott did some juggling at the Jugglers Rest, we posted the parcel and headed off into the misty hills out of Picton.

The pass over to Blenheim was drizzly but not too wet and we turned inland to reach the wineries of Marlborough. We knew exactly which wineries we wanted to target thanks to Clifford Spratt and Jim Boswell!

Huia
Our first stop was Huia (pronounced who-ee-ah), from whom we'd had a lovely chardonnay at my leaving do in London. We were disappointed that the Chardonay was sold out (it had sold out in December) but we had sauvignon blanc and pinot gris and bought a little bottle of one of the SB to take away. The French lady at the wionery was really friendly and knew her stuff.

Allan Scott
Here we tried loads of wine; five tastings plus a fizzy! This was a bit busier but the lady in charge was really nice to us and interested in our cycling. We bought a bottle of pink fizz but made a note of the wines we liked so that we can seek them out and maybe send some home if we have any money left at the end of our trip.

Cloudy Bay
Across the road from Allan Scott and the best wines we tasted all day. Again we stuck to white and wished we could buy more but we had enought to carry already!

We cycled into Blenheim (very well considereing we'd tasted 14 wines!) and straight to the Top 10 campsite which, to set it apart from other Top 10's, had State Highway 1 passing straight over it! We found a pitch as far from the overpass as possible and settled down on our air mats for some wine in out titanium mugs (a travesty, I know). It was fun sitting outside being tent twitchers! As we cracked open our tin of tuna we were suddenly completely surrounded by 6 Australians who seemd to think we were a bit of a novelty and couldn't believe we had cycled over the "mountain" from Picton (the hill was about 100m high!) and that we were going to sleep in our tent! They were really quite frightening and brought me out in giggles! It was really rude of me but I couldn't stop laughing at the absurdity of the situation (I felt like an exhibit!) so Scott covered for me and said I was drunk from wine tasting! They soon cleared off to harass the next campers!

Our next excitment was to to attract the one-legged duck! Poor thing, we gave him lots of crackers and saw off other more able-bodided ducks so he could eat in peace.

As the wine went down we hatched a plan to cycle 130km the next day to get straight to Kaikoura as there was nowhere particularly to stop in between. Hmm, maybe drunken route planning is not such a good idea...we'll see!