Cardrona

Day 28 Cardrona

"Dreaming while dawn's left hand was in the sky,

I heard a voice within the temple cry,

Awake my little ones and fill life's cup,

For once drunk it is forever dry."

Rubyait of Omar Khayan

Dawn.

Obligatory shot at Cardrona pub.

Early start and pleased to be up at Cardrona, 556 metres and 26 kms done in just over two hours. 444 m to the top. The valley was 400-600 m wide but is narrowing. There were fields of green lucerne, high in protein, roots searching down 20 metres for water although these were being irrigated. I worked school holidays in a plant using oil to dry it, trucks harvesting it 24 hrs a day. Dad used to say grapes should be grown in Marlborough long before they were. He has seen similar conditions in Italy and loved talking about vino. Lucerne must be break fed to stock. If they eat too much they can bloat up and die and farmers need to knife their stomachs to allow the gas to escape.

There are hawks everywhere both dead and alive. They are so ungainly taking off and preoccupied with their meal of roadkill they react slowly to the traffic and must at least get airborne because their carcasses are usually off the road, hit in mid-air.