Day 155 - Blenheim & Renwick & the Marlborough wineries, South Island - Monday 19th March 2012

We wakened from our slumber and cooked up a storm of scrambled eggs on toast before departing for our drive to Blenheim. We arrived in Blenheim and quickly headed out towards Renwick which was to be our base for the night. When we arrived in NZ we'd pledged that halfway through our time in NZ we'd treat ourselves and stay in a B & B somewhere as six weeks in a small camper seemed quite an exhausting thought. Funny enough we were both still feeling ok with the camper but it just so happened that tomorrow would be the three week anniversary of being in NZ and we were entering into colossus wine producing Marlborough and so there seemed no better time than to check into a B & B and go and get drunk in the wineries without the worry of having to drive the van!

Now if an alien being landed in Marlborough without an idea of where he was in the world it wouldn't take him long to work out that the area was a massive wine growing region - there are vines everywhere you look. Marlborough produces three quarters of NZ's wine and at the last count, there were 23,810 hectares of vines planted - that's approximately 34,000 rugby pitches!

We arrived at the Olde Mill House B & B, unpacked our stuff and made our way down to the garage to look at the bikes. If you stay with the B & B you get to hire their bikes, for riding around the local vineyards, for free - genius! I'd been joking with Ad that I wanted to get a tandem bike and low and behold they had one. Of course, I assured Ad that I was simply joking and actually the thought of being on a tandem terrified me but none the less he insisted and so before you knew it we were riding, rather clumsily, into the distance on our tandem. This was our first mistake; I'm not great on a bike at the best of times, to prove so I was the only girl in my primary school to fail my cycle proficiency - quite an achievement! Our second mistake was that obviously the act of balance and bike riding gets harder the more wine you drink - you get the picture.

Anyway, onto our first vineyard; Forest wines and we tried six wines - three red, two white and a scrumptious desert wine. We made a pack to go back later for the desert wine and cheese board. A short ride around the corner came our second vineyard the Nautilus estate and here we tried another five wines - a light and fruity bubbly, three whites, one being a really tasty and earthy sauvignon blanc and another a lovely and light pinot gris, and finally a full bodied red pinot noir. By this point both our heads and stomachs were feeling rather light and so we rode over to the vineyard across the road called Wairau River which also sold lunch. We choose our lunch, a mussel chowder with herb bread for me and a smoked salmon salad for Ad, and then headed to the tasting area to choose a wine to have with our lunch. After trying several we agreed upon the reserve sauvignon blanc - it was gorgeous and one of the best we'd tried and accompanied our lunches very well!

With our lunch done we started the quite long ride to the Cloudy Bay vineyard; there were several others along the way but we were already feeling quite woozy by this point and so had decided to head there and then maybe one other after that. We arrived at Cloudy Bay and entered into their posh tasting room to sample six of their wines. Out of the six, the best by far was the desert wine and so we bought a bottle to have later. After frolicking about on Cloudy Bay's lawn with their croquet set and swinging chairs we decided it was time to head back - we were both a bit drunk and definitely not capable of riding a tandem bike! We stopped by at the local supermarket and stocked up on cheese, biscuits, chutney and chocolate to accompany our desert wine and then headed back to the B & B. Once there we ran a bath (we've not had a bath for over six months!) and sat in the hot water drinking our desert wine and eating our cheese and biscuits - it was divine!

The rest of the evening was a little bit of a blur but it involved lazy around in the complimentary dressing gowns, eating more chocolate, drinking more wine and finally watching a film before falling into a deep and drunken sleep.