Easter Weekend

It was all decided a few weeks ago over some drinks on a Friday night... we thought it would be a good idea to hire a bach (cottage - bach is short for bachelor-pad) in a village called Martinborough which is over the hills from Wellington in the Waiarapa, about 1.5hours drive away so we booked a 3 bed cottage, bought some food and off we went, Adam and Rhea, Fiona and Rich and Steve and me. After work on Thursday night we all travelled over the hills and away to the wine capital of the southern North Island. As the majority of the vineyards do wine tasting we thought it would be a fantastic way to spend the Easter weekend.

Somehow we didn't get off to an early start on Friday - something to do with the 5 bottles of wine we drank on Thursday night perhaps???

We walked to the other side of town where we had arranged to hire bikes. I was hoping that Steve would be able to ride a bike having been unable to walk recently due to his bad back, and if he couldn't ride a bike we would not be able to get round all the vineyards we wanted to go to.

Luckily he was fine and although we all agreed that the saddles were very uncomfortable Steve at least was very happy that he could get around so easily. Don't you love the baskets????

Off we went to the first vineyard - Tirohana. Slight problem in that they are not allowed to do wine tasting on good Friday.... which was the reason for coming up this weekend... and not being allowed wine unless we bought food - d'oh!!! never mind we got round this by buying 3 glasses of wine, some hot cross buns and having 3 empty wine glasses.... we split each glass of wine into 2 and all tried some - as the owner of the vineyard realised that we wanted to do wine tasting but had obviously decided to do it on the wrong day he took pity on us and gave us the hot cross buns for free - what a nice gesture :)

We did manage to get to a further 2 vineyards but they were both the same - you had to buy food if you wanted to do the wine tasting so it was turning out to be a very expensive day and very fattening too.... so we went back to the house and had a BBQ with some more wine.

Oh and there was an outside spa at the house which Steve found helped his back so we spent a bit of time in the spa under the stars drinking wine - lovely :)

Saturday was another gorgeous day and as we had found a bike in the shed that Steve could use we let him cycle and the rest of us walked around some of the remaining vineyards that we had not visited the previous day...

One of them gave us a tour around the processing area and showed us all the grape squishing equipment and bottling plant.

After visiting 3 and trying over 20 different wines we went back to the bach for a picnic lunch and then out again to another 3 in the afternoon. needless to say we were feeling a bit tired by the evening and so we all decided a relaxed evening of spa followed by BBQ and DVD was needed.

Sunday followed bright and clear... the weather that is not our heads! It was time for everyone to go their separate ways and Steve and I decided that we would take a trip down the coast to Ngawi and Cape Palliser as we'd not explored that far down.

It was beautiful. probably something to do with the weather but the sea was such a gorgeous colour that I had to go for a paddle.

We drove to the point to see the lighthouse, which we didn't climb up to as there were very steep steps and I'm not good with heights and Steve didn't think his back would cope!As we were driving along the coast I thought I saw a seal in the water but thinking I had drunk too much the night before convinced myself that it was just seaweed. however on the way back I saw it again and made Steve stop the car. As you can see it was not just seaweed :) Amazing to see these creatures so close and behind no fences just off the road... they didn't smell too pleasant though!