We were onboard our Interislander ferry by around 8:30am with a sail time of 9:30am. We had checked in a lot earlier and had to sit in the car waiting in lanes for a while before that. Simon wasn’t too disappointed by that as he saw a huge group of McLaren cars while we waited. One of them costing 1 million dollars. Jeez! He took a lot of photos and had to be ushered back into the car when we needed to board. The group was doing a tour of the country, stopping at race tracks often to properly enjoy their cars. Once on board we had a conversation with the tours videographer, who turned out to be a videographer for top gear! Pretty cool.

The first thing we did was book ourselves in to watch ‘The accountant’ in the little cinema on board and then get a bacon egg muffin. Yummy! I had taken my seasickness tablets and was starting to feel a little doppy. To cut a long story short, I fell asleep in the cinema and later realised I had accidentally taken 2 tablets when I should have taken 1. Whoops! I won’t be doing that again!! I felt horrible. Apparently the film was pretty good. I only remember the very beginning haha!

The film finished just as we were coming into all of the beautiful Sounds of the South Island. The whole area was just so beautiful and we were so glad that we were going to have the time to explore the North of the South Island when so many people rush straight off to the West or East Coast. Once we got off the ferry we were heading to Blenheim. We were going to have an explore of Picton that afternoon, but I was still feeling pretty doppy so we headed to Blenheim and I slept for 2 hours and didn’t do a lot else with the day except food shopping and cooking. Simon was happy for a rest I think. That’s one thing we’ve been pretty bad at whilst travelling, just taking the odd day to do not a lot.

The weather had turned the next day, but we headed out early anyway to the Omaka Aviation Centre. Simon had seen an advert for this the day previously and really wanted to go to see the World War 2 display of aircraft. Simon found it all very informative, surprisingly modern and unexpected. They had on display a Hurricane, Stuka, Spitfire, P40 and a Yak aircraft. All of the displays were built around very real scenes which made it far more interesting for someone like me and there was a huge amount of boards of information to read. There was a movie about Stalingrad, which made us reflect, especially about the numbers of casualties during the war particularly in the Soviet Union. It was a really interesting morning.

We drove to Picton, put on many layers and our waterproofs and headed out for a walk. I’m like a dog, I need to be exercised at least once a day. We decided to walk along the front and also along the Bobs Cove walk which took us about 1.5 hours return in total. It gave us a chance to look at some of the beautiful scenery we had seen coming into the harbour the day before, but at a much slower pace.

Afterwards we spent some time in the Picton National Whale Centre where we learnt more about the whaling industry in New Zealand and also about the species that can be found here. The centre is really informative and completely free. Definitely worth some time if you are coming through the area.

On our way out of Picton we decided to go for one more walk at Karaka Point Lookout and Maori Pa Site. It wasn’t a long walk, but it took us through some old Maori ruins and then down to Karaka Beach, which was breathtaking. We watched gulls munching on mussel shells and did a spot of rock pooling. Lovely. The next day we were going on a Marlborough Sounds Winery bike ride so wanted to get some good rest to be on top form for wine tasting.

We were picked up in the morning by Wine Tours by Bike and then taken to their office where we would be collecting our bikes, helmets and maps of the area. The whole tour was going to be self guided, which is what we wanted. We were given so much information by the owner at the start about the region, the local vineyards and how to get around on our bikes. There were around 15 vineyards within a reasonable radius that we could visit during our time, but it was best to aim to visit 5. We tagged along with 2 couples from the States for the day and had the best time tasting wine and riding our bikes.We visited: Forrest, Bladen, Nautilus, No 1, Whitehaven, Wairau River and then went back to Forrest to buy some wine. Most of the vineyards did free tasting or it was a really small fee to taste up to 6 or 7 wines. We stopped for a cheese board at Nautilus which was so delicious and just had the BEST day. The sun was shining, the wine was flowing.

There are so many people back in the UK that this day made me think of. I know so many of you would have LOVED this experience and really hope that you get to experience this in the future. Wine Tours by Bike took us back to our accommodation and I couldn’t more highly recommend them. They were so professional and helpful. We met some Kiwi’s and one Brit on the transfer bus back and we arranged to go to the local beer garden for some drinks that evening, which was also brilliant fun.

Our time in Blenheim and the Marlborough Sounds region had come to an end and we were heading up to the Nelson and Abel Tasman region the next day. We had a great time gaining more wine knowledge and we can’t wait to show it off when we get back 🙂