Blenheim - Marlborough Country

This is Marlborough wine county, which sounds a bit Wild West American, rather than New Zealand. It was only a short hop from KaiKoura and wonderful scenery. We travelled beside the Ocean and railway most of the trip, turning inland to Blenheim towards the end. We have booked into a hotel for two nights, as it was difficult to find a good campsite. They told us there would be no parking for Miss Maui, but we sneaked her into the car park this afternoon, and she has been left at peace since we arrived. Bless her. That's her sneaked away in the back corner.

She's unobtrusive, but surrounded by BMW's and Jaguars. To add insult to injury for our Blenheim hotel, we passed the Karaka Lobster shack on the drive, so we stopped for coffee and bought 2 lobster salads. Here is the shack.

The lobsters were big, but this is ridiculous!

Anyway, when we had arrived in Blenheim and settled into our room, Sue produced this.

It was the most wonderful lobster the hotel had ever served, and they didn't even know about it. We had picked up a chilled bottle of wine from the local supermarket to accompany our lobster. Altogether, an extremely lovely night out, without leaving our room!

Obviously, we are doing our upmost to get expelled from the hotel, but so far, so good. Tomorrow we are all going on a wine tour of Marlborough country. Please ensure you don't have any travel commitments tomorrow! We are going to be picked up and dropped off at the hotel. I have visions of the AbFab scene when Patsy literally poured out of the taxi onto the pavement after her night out!

See you all tomorrow.

We were picked up at our hotel and went straight to the Cloudy Bay winery.

A lovely glass of Sauvignon Blanc at 10:30am, perfect. Luckily, we were served about 20ml a time of about 4 wines. Obviously, when you get to the 5th winery, 4 small samples is still becoming a bit of a challenge. Sue and I both endured and had a fabulous time. We came away with a couple of excellent bottles and had the most wonderful lunch sitting outside amongst vines. We were with about 10 others from, New Zealand, Australia, America and England. Some were very knowledgeable about wines, but even they found the narrative very interesting. I was a bit shocked to discover Cloudy Bay is owned by the Louis Vuitton, Moet and Hennessy LVMH Group. As the day continued and we sampled more Sauvignon Blanc's from other vineyards, we had to reconsider our opinion of our beloved Cloudy Bay. Our other wineries were, Forrest, Saint Clair, where we had lunch, then Whitehaven and finally Fromm.

Sorry, all good things have to come to an end. Tomorrow, we are on the ferry from Picton to Wellington. We sail across the Cook Straits, which according to Wikipedia, is one of the most dangerous and unpredictable stretches of water in the world. It is also described as one of the most scenic stretches of water in the world. We just hope it's scenic tomorrow!

Better get some sleep then. Good night.

Love Sue & Trev xx