Friday, January 05, 2007

Off to the land of my dreams

Part of my dreaming over recent years has been a hankering to grow vines and olives - very cliche I know but there you have it. Before coming to New Zealand I was very excited about the prospect for doing this as one of the finest wine growing regions (the Wairarapa) is about 80km (50miles) from Wellington and I thought this might well be a doable commute for MT and started searching for my ideal plot to start my new farming venture.

Little did I know that there is a massive mountain range to cross between Wellington and the Wairarapa making it an impossible daily road commute. Although there are trains they take an hour plus travel time to the station so my dreams were starting to be blown away into something more realistic and closer to Wellington.

Still, I've been living that dream for a couple of days staying in Martinborough. We took to the road on two wheels and went wine tasting, had excellent porch picnic at our "retreat" venue, lunch at a vineyard and dinner at a foodie hotel in town. All in all it was a smashing break to see what I was missing but most of all the sun was shining and we enjoyed a little New Zealand summer.

Today's photo blog gives you a flavour of what we saw, alternatively you can look up what the Wairarapa has on offer for future potential visitors www.wairarapanz.com (we stayed at the Aylstone).

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