Blenheim to Wellington

Blenheim to Wellington

An easy, flat, short 28 km to the ferry today, right! By mid morning the north wind was howling down the road between the hills, straight into our faces. The road seemed ever upward except for about 1 km out of Picton when we had a nice downhill. All others had their cycling clothes on except me. I figured that for a 7 hour journey with 1 hour of riding it was not worth staying in spandex all day. Mind you I look better in spandex than some of the others but Rita was with me anyway so what was the point.

We arrived in Picton well before the ferry loading time so that we could repackage our stuff. We had already managed to get all the luggage and food into the trailer and so now we had to put 5 bikes into the van. Kirk’s was already strapped to the top of the trailer and after removing the front wheels from 4 more we got them into the van. This meant that we didn’t have to pay extra for each of those bikes to go across. After all this was done we went to the bar to have the usual, flat white coffee.

The ferry crossing was smooth sailing and we enjoyed the scenery from the perspective of the water. One picture shows the bikes strapped down in the ferry and the other some of the ladies on deck.

Wellington is a fairly large city, in fact the largest that we will be cycling in. The road to the hotel passes right through the downtown area and it was late Saturday afternoon at this time, busy traffic. Since Rita and I had explored the city while waiting for the ferry on the journey south; we led the way for all the rides and the van to the hotel. All went well except for U-turn between two one-way streets where I ended up on the wrong side of the road and all others followed.

Tonight’s hotel is right in the downtown area; an old city hotel which has both hotel and backpacker accommodations. Kirk prepared his bike for the trip home and was sorry to have to go back home. Because there is no place to keep the bikes we put 5 into the empty trailer, 4 into the back of the van and laid the tandem across the seats. We will take the tandem out tomorrow and put it in the hotel room when we use the van for taxi service to church.

The backpacker’s kitchen here is rather small and crowed but we enjoyed a meal of beef stroganoff all the same.