Wonderful night sleep!! The mattress was foam I’m sure of it, and only four of us in the room, with no snoring or farting!
Woke up just before the alarm though, but it was 8am so not such a bad feeling!

It’s Ellie’s birthday!!! She FaceTimed Home and didn’t cry.... stronger than me haha!

We were on the road at 8.45am, not far this morning to blenhiem drop off. Let’s hope the weather is a little better this afternoon than it is now because we have 100% cloud cover which isn’t ideal for wine tasting...

The coasts Road was pretty, lots and lots of seals to spot along the way flipped over a rock on the beach. Still lots of road works going on where they are building new roads and reconstructing the cliff side to prevent further damage when and if there is another earthquake like the one in 2016.

We were the only two getting dropped off in Blenhiem, we had to walk almost 1km to the backpackers hostel because our bus driver was new and wasn’t sure what he was doing I don’t think. A pleasant and as usual quiet walk. Cars everywhere, people nowhere, I never quite understand. Even at home if there are cars everywhere you’d see a head popping up from behind a window or someone jumping in a car or walking down the street or something. But here nothing.

Jacks backpackers was just a big house converted into a hostel, these backpacker houses always remind me of hoarder houses, full of random crap everywhere. We were out in the shed though, a huge room for six beds (three bunks) there was a bathroom attached and a small sink and kettle so we didn’t have to keep going in and out the house. Bedding was clean and tidy, there was a girl living there who had a high vis jacket and seemed to work nights. Curiosity all over our faces!!

‘Grab a bike from the back yard and take it out, what ever is left out there!’ That’s what we got told about hiring the free bikes. I wondered why so chilled about it until we seen them full of cobwebs and rust all over them. You weren’t even able to change the height of the seat because it was bolted on. Bloody great!
Well we picked two of a bad bunch and rode down to wither hills winery, very quiet along all the roads to the winery just outside of Blenheim and amongst lots of other vineyards and wineries. It was a stunning setting and a huge place but very quiet. Probably because it was a Monday afternoon?
We tried three wines for 5$ and then made a move to the next winery (Lawson winery). Ellie’s legs were hurting from using her bike so we swopped bikes, just a good mess about with the gears and it was fine! Probably helped that I wasn’t wearing heavy clothes like El so I didn’t really sweat, it was pumping out of Ellie lol.
Our butts on fire from the awful saddles and my back is going to be fit for nothing tomorrow from how low this saddle is.

We pulled into Lawsons, an old guy greeted us at the door. Seemed very miserable and asked us where our helmets were. Well they didn’t give us any! Then continued to lecture us with it’s the law and bla bla bla, not sure it was the law if we were driving bikes on the pavement the entire way here and our bikes just aswell be used like the flinstones car that our saddles were that low?
It’s okay though, we are walking them back into town which wasn’t so far. (Maybe a little further after a few glasses of wine).

He warmed to us after a while and then told us all about him living in Devon and going up to Wales to surf. Too much talking not enough wine drinking sometimes but the wine was good! My favourite was probably the late harvest white wine, so sweet! Used as an actual desert wine not what they make up in the restaurants at home.

After tasting them all we had a few glasses sat at the window overlooking the vineyard and made our own platter of cheese, meats, crackers and olives. Yummy!
He told us that the wine we should be drinking for Christmas dinner is a Sauvignon blanc with oak flavours to compliment the turkey... not that I’ll have to worry about that this year with all the vegans in my house!

Very merrily walked the bikes back into town, again very quiet for a Monday rush hour but we headed to another two wine bars for another glass of wine in each before checking out the Irish bar and then hitting the hay. Hitting the hay a lot earlier than usual after a day session but a cup of tea and a comfy bed to rest up that bum of ours from the damn bikes was what was needed!

Happy birthday Ellie! What a great day :)