This past Friday I took a hike through the Wither Hills Farm Park, which is just a 5 minute drive from where I live. There are heaps of walking and mountainbiking tracks there. I chose to climb the small peak of the "Hills", Mount Vernon.
Here are the Wither Hills...
The terrain is just a bit different than my previous hiking experiences in wet and rugged Taranaki!
This was a can't-miss photo opportunity!
Here's a view from the Mount Vernon lookout, about 350meters. The town below is my 'hood, Blenheim!
Out to the east is Cloudy Bay, part of the Cook Strait (between North and South Island). In the distance beyond the Bay, I think you can see the North Island!
Not a bad bench, eh?
I took a different trek down from the peak, and came across these hikers. The joys of hiking through a Farm Park!
One was so tired she stopped to rest in the middle of the track!
(And yes, you had to be careful where you stepped.)
Last weekend my Wellington running mates Pete and Dave took the ferry across for a roadtrip with me to Nelson for Marchfest.
Nelson is about a 1.5 hr hilly, curvy drive from Blenheim. It has more craft breweries per capita than anywhere else in New Zealand. Therefore a perfect place to hold a Craft Brew and Music Fest!
Before the festival we visited McCashins Brewery for a tour. They're a family-run business, and the owner's wife gave us a tour.
Nelson is also primo growing area for hops, a key ingredient in beer. We got to sample some of the different local hops-- some tasty, some not-so-much. The dark brown one actually tasted like coffee!
One of the interesting facts I learned on the tour is that they use machines to filter out all the sediment before the beer is bottled. This is by consumer's preference not to want to drink a cloudy beverage. However the sediment is where all the vitamins and nutrients are! And to think we filter that away! How wasteful and unhealthy, eh? :)
McCashin's has a lot of smaller distillery tanks where they brew small batches of beer, like the ones they specially made for the festival. A bunch of the beer-o-philes on our tour were plotting a way to secretly steal of of these small stills for their home use :)
We spent the afternoon and evening at the festival enjoying the many brews...
Just as awesome as the beer was the MUSIC! Here is a group called Chimuka, who were pretty much a bunch of hippies cranking out African beats on their wooden Marimbas.
A Christchurch solo-artist named Delaney Davidson posed a contest to the crowd--- the best waltzing duo would win one of his CDs! Dave led me to the dance floor, we (pseudo)waltzed, and wouldn't you know, we won the prize!
We weren't that great at all, but we were the first (and last!) couple on the dance floor. Persistence pays off!
And while NCAA Basketball March Madness was hitting the states, it was Badminton Playoff Time here in Blenheim NZ! A group of girls from work asked me to join their badminton team. I learned the hard way that badminton is not just another raquet sport, and just because you were a semi-decent tennis player in High School does NOT mean you're going to be any good at badminton.
Here's Mel (nurse) and Jo (front desk secretary) deep in badminton concentration.
Here is our prim and proper ladylike team photo :)
Our team did absolutely horribly, but we definitely had the most laughs!!
From hiking to hops to badminton shuttlecocks, it's been a fun March here. Stay tuned for some exciting April adventures!
