Adelaide to Clare

Day 268

Pack up and say a fond adieu to Adelaide. We are planning on coming back before heading towards Melbourne. Plus the famous Adelaide fringe starts in just over a week so we will be able to catch a show or two and hopefully see Chris (and family) again.

Drive south an hour so to McLaren vale and our second famous wine region (South Australia is littered with them) in as many weeks. Check in and set up amongst the other backpackers who are either picking grapes or waiting to pick grapes and decide to waste no time and head straight back into town on our bikes and register in the Harvest Labour recruitment agency. “White grapes are being picked now and red grapes are coming in the next week or so” we are told amongst a lot of other things, the woman was really nice and I think she was glad to have an English speaking couple in as everyone else (and there were quite a few others) seemed to be speaking in tongues.

We both have a romantic idea of picking a few grapes in the daytime and drinking wine and eating cheese in the evenings and whilst we are both fully aware that it is going to back breaking work in the belting hot sun, it only seems to give something back after all these years. Plus we will be able to forevermore recommend a certain vintage from a certain winery made with grapes we picked.

Registration done we head back to the campsite and start planning for the ‘Shiraz trail’.

Day 269

Up in the morning and jump on the bikes for a cycle ride along the ‘Shiraz trail’.

Much like the Riesling trail in Clare the Shiraz trail takes you along a dedicated bike path and past lots of cellar doors in a region famous for their Shiraz (we were looking forward to this).

A good day for cycling as it’s not too hot and we make it several cellar doors for tastings throughout the day including; Angove wines,

Maxwell wines (look out for the Silver hammer Shiraz),

Simply Organoleptic (horrible British run place (I felt a bit ashamed)),

 Foggo wines(lovely Shiraz),

 Echidna wines,

Serafino wines (horrible woman, horrible wines)

and finally Oxenbury farm (whew).

Found our way back to the campsite, laden down with bottles again and literally poured ourselves into bed.

Day 270

Decide that whilst we are here we should probably do another day cycling the Shiraz trail and so out on the bikes it is again. Start with a recommendation from Chris in Adelaide and head to Alpha Box and Dice (Excellent wines throughout),

 Then continue on stopping at Hugh Hamilton (lovely cellar door location),

Primo wines where, after chatting to the man it turns out the cellar door building was designed by a lecturer at Sydney Uni (He didn’t know which one).

It’s an inward looking building focusing on a well proportioned (and  mostly well detailed) courtyard which all looks very cool but we are in the middle of fields and fields of grapes and they are trying to sell wine, it might be an idea to show the customer the product!! There was a nice framed view from the tasting room but we were too busy paying attention to the man describing the wines and trying to nod in the right places. On top of that I have just had to ask Carmen (at time of writing) what the place was called as there appears to be no signage whatsoever. I applaud the winery as a patron of the arts but I’m also glad that the guy couldn’t remember the Architects name because I don’t think I much care for him.

Final stop of the day is the Vale inn, a microbrewery where unfortunately they do not have a tasting plate so we just have to take a punt and try a beer each.

Both of them were nice enough but nothing special and so we jump back on the bikes and head home.

Day 271

As we haven’t had a call about work we are planning to head south to ‘land’s end’ point and stay in Deep Creek National Park for a couple of days and hoping that next week we might get a call.

So as soon as we have made the plan and are literally packing up to go the phone rings and it is the contractor from Clare we spoke to last week saying there is definitely grape picking work on Tue and possibly Mon if we are still interested.

Change of plan then and we left out of the park and not right and drive past Adelaide and towards Clare. Have a stop for lunch in Port Wakefield but don’t think too much of it and decide to continue all the way back to Clare and the same (the only) caravan park.

The woman remembers us and we have a laugh about being alcoholics (I think she was joking) and we check back in to the same spot we had last time we were here.