Jan 18th

Whizzed down the hills from our B and B and arrived at the Interislander Ferry Terminal within 10 minutes. Sunny but cool breeze. We were the first on the Arahura [ Pathway to Dawn] which carries 100 cars, over 1000 passengers and up to 60 railway waggons.  We hitched our bike up next to another bike of a Brit and had a great 3 hour ferry journey. The sea was calm unlike an incident some years ago when the journey took 40 hours during a violent gale. We crossed the Cook Strait reckoned to be on a bad day one of the roughest stretches of water in the world but hard to imagine on such a benign day as today. We could see South Island clearly from Wellington and much of the journey was in the protected waters of Wellington bays or the Queen Charlotte Sound on South Island. As we approached Picton our destination in South Island we sailed along the narrow sound which is heavily wooded with tiny villages clinging to the shore. Picton at the head of the sound looked like a scene from the Mediterranean.
We were first off the ferry and after the first 3/4 miles of hills we had a gradual descent to Blenheim, although battling all the time against a strong southerly wind. The pass we cycled down was also heavily wooded until nearer Blenheim when we cycled beside a swamp with thousands of seemingly dead trees - were they Mangrove trees and if so why no leaves on them in the middle of summer- answers on a postcard please! The effect of these trees was surreal and slightly sinister.
As we approached Blenheim we are now in Marlborough County we cycled past fields of vines in rows as one sees at Chilford Hall, Linton and in northern France but not in Cyprus. Found our motel easily enough in Blenheim and now looking forward to a glass of the local red!