We arrived in Picton just before lunch and were feeling very lazy so decided to go for a walk along the headland from Picton out to what is known as the snout! It was nice and sheltered during the walk but when we reached the end of the headland we were nearly blown over it was so rough! But we had a great view of the ferries coming in and out through the very narrow channels! Also of the Queen Charlotte Track, which is a famous walk around the Marlborough Sounds.

From Picton we headed onto Blenheim, which is a nice little town on a river and one of the major Marlborough wine regions, famous for its white wines. We booked ourselves on a wine by bike tour. We hired the bikes for the whole day, setting off at about 10.30am till 5pm and biking all around part of the region stopping off at different wineries along the way for free tastings!

It was great, the sun was shining and as you can imagine we had a great time stopping off at 10 wineries in total, by the end of the day we were more than a little tipsy as the samples were pretty big and at each winery we would try at least 5 different wines, all were quite expensive wines, I think the cheapest would have been 8 pound a bottle and mainly whites but also a few merlots and pinot noirs to keep me happy! Although saying that I think after today, Andrew and I have been converted a little bit to expensive white wine!

The only trouble was we chatted far too much at each winery, particuarly with those who had been travelling, so we ran out of time and did not get to the last few, one of which was a liquer distillery!

A few names to look out for at home, Wither Hills, Matua Marlborough and Isabel were all very nice and do export to the UK!

Lots of Love

Sarah and Andrew xxx