Blenheim and ducklings

14/11/12
We got into Blenheim about four and booked into the Top Ten park, which by the time night fell was fairly full with campervans. Not so many tents - in fact, ours is just about the only one, it think - but it's a very tidy, and large, site.  Only disadvantage is that the bridge on which all the main road traffic travels is over the stream that runs through the caravan park and the traffic noise echoes and reverberates around the place.  When the trains go past, and there seem to be plenty of them, the noise is fortissimo!  In spite of that we both slept pretty well, so that's a plus.  I'm over in the kitchen typing this because Celia is still asleep.  I was awake at four, prayed for a while, and went back to sleep at five I guess, woke again at six, and have been over here pretty much since then.

We did a bit of a tour around Blenheim on foot last night, getting some idea of the place.  Quite a different town to what I expected, though it was very deserted last night.  We'll check it out further today.  The weather has got past its wet and heavy cloud stuff, so it looks as though it's going to be a decent day, always a relief when camping!

Feeding the ducklings, while the
mother duck looks on unconcerned.

Last night we cooked and had our tea outside rather than dragging everything over to the kitchen - the kitchen is up a little rise and then up some stairs (for some reason the facilities near us are in a building where everything is upstairs and nothing on ground level).  While we were eating, a mother duck and her six ducklings - we'd seen them down by the stream before - came over to see if there was anything going food-wise.  I went and got some bread, and while the mother looked on, her six ducklings scrabbled for bits of bread right out of my hand,  I've just passed them again coming back from the kitchen. They show absolutely no fear.

Later. We had a very quiet day all up, spending the morning mostly either reading, snoozing, or doing the puzzles we got from 1066.  I managed to complete three of these including one I hadn't been able to do the other day, but this afternoon I couldn't get my head round them at all.  Maybe I'd worn my brain out.  I finished the latest Ian Rankin tonight; very good read with a nice red herring running through the greater part of it.  I’m not sure that the solution to the serial murders is handled as much of a surprise: the killer is a character who doesn't turn until late in the book, and there's only Rebus's hunch to undo him.

This afternoon we drove into the town centre and wandered around doing our own thing separately: Celia at the op shops, me taking some photos and visiting the Millennium Gallery, which had a couple of exhibitions on (with paintings all for sale) but had no room for any of its permanent collection.  An ongoing problem apparently.

We were going to have potatoes for tea (along with some other things) but the potatoes had vanished out of the car.   Must have left them at my daughter's.  Tomorrow we're aiming to go to Picton and then round the coast road to Havelock and so to Nelson.  We're told that the coast road round the Queen Charlotte Sound is good and not too hilly.  Let's hope that's right!