St Arnaud to Blenheim

Today was the longest day so far, 102km but after the first 4km u pout of St Arnaud it was generally all downhill. It was only a shame about the slight headwind and all the rain. It began raining at 8pm last night and was still raining heavily when I woke this morning. The tent though was nice and dry inside and I was tempted to stay in side all day, but mother nature called and I had to answer. Getting up it was immediately obvious that today was, in the words of my good mate Stu Stone, "A good day for ducks.: and they were relishing it, swimming about in the carpark and on various parts of the campsite. Luckily I hadn't put the tent up in the nice wee corner I spotted - it was now a mini-extension of the lake!

I went for a quick walk along one of the tracks and decided that there was no way I'd be tramping 10 hours in this weather. The track conditions didn't look they'd be much good and I didn't have my tramping boots. Back at the shelter Toni and Llewyn preparing to ride out so I resolved to do so too hoping that ponce I was down out the alpine area the weather would fine up. It didn't and my drowned rat impression continued until about 12:30 when after 60km it finally eased off. The rivers were all very swollen with fallen trees being washed down. They looked a bit like a pale version of Willie Wonka's chocolate river.

The ride pretty much followed the Wairau river all the way to Renwick and onto Blenheim which meant it was a nice long downhill. The wind picked up in the late morning though so I was pedalling at times just to keep going - into the driving rain. Oh fun. I stopped at the Wairau tavern for hot chips but with no bread I couldn't have butties, so they won't feature in the final analysis. Which is a shame as the landlord would get extra points for all of the Otago-inspired decoration in the pub; lots of Speights signage and several framed photographs of Otago All Blacks from the mid 90's including my favourite - Josh Kronfeld.

The scenery changed through the day from alpine to sub alpine, then pine plantations and sheep farms and finally to vineyards. Blenheim is the capital of the Marlborough region which is one of New Zealand's big wine producing areas.



With the camping grounds in Blenheim charging for two people for a tent site I opted for the Koanui hostel which is right on SH1. "nui" means big, but I'm not sure what "koa" means - turns out koanui means a large and happy place to stay - and it was. I alerted the manager that my snoring could keep everyone in the dorm awake, so she gave me a room to myself! Could be a good ruse for the future......


Blenheim has this interesting sculpture of two beavers. They aren't native to NZ at all, or even introduced, but apparently the area used to be swamp and because of this, the locals of old referred to themselves as beavers!


The weather forecast looks like rain from now until the weekend, but I'll push on. My brother, Vaughan has bought himself a mountain bike and texted me to say he'd cycle out to meet me for a beer or two on the way into Christchurch, so I'll try to get there for Sunday afternoon. I don't know why he can't just come out on his Harley and ride really slowly...

Today's myPod didn't feature a lot of rain-based songs. Instead 'Venus' by Bananarama and 'Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves' by The Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin.