Barossa Valley

We left Dianne and Andrew in the afternoon on the 2nd of Jan, headed up to Nuriootpa in the Barossa Valley and checked into the Barossa Tourist Park. The facilities were pretty good but $27 per night for an unpowered site we thought was a bit steep. They seemed pretty full so it must be supply/demand thing. We set up, bought some food and had a pretty early night.

Campsite at Barossa

The next day we started filling our Butcher, Baker, Winemaker hamper (a wedding present from Di and Andrew). We went to the SA Company Store at Yalumba Winery in Angaston for breakfast, which was pretty good except that we didn't get our free coffee. After that we headed back to Tanunda to the Jacob's Creek Visitor Centre where we went on a tour and learned about different grape types and how the grapes are grown. They had a show vineyard but it was difficult to tell the varieties apart as they were all still green. This was topped off with a tasting. We mainly stuck to whites here. To walk off the tasting, we strolled along the creek and saw their resident kangaroos and emus.

Breakfast

Kitty in the Vineyard outside the SA Company Store

Old building at SA company store

Massive tree at Jacobs Creek

Jacobs Creek itself

A friendly reminder as you leave Jacobs creek on how to drive

We headed back to Angaston to continue to fill our hamper. We got fruits and cheese here and then on to Truro for an olive oil tasting. The lady here was great - we got a warm mini loaf, oil, balsamic and dukkah to enjoy before we bought some olives (bush and Koroneiki) and some caramelised balsamic.

We collected some wine on the drive through Seppeltsfield at Barossa Valley Estate. We tried a few of their wines and selected 3 to take away. We stopped by Maggie Beer on the way home and had a look around. We finished off the day making our own tasting plate with all the goodies!

Kitty at Maggie Beers

Our stash from the day.

On Tuesday (Jan 4) we jumped on our bikes, Lawrie loaded with the Barossa cool bag full of water. We rode along Linear Park (is that name an SA thing? basically the park that goes along the river) out to the back of Nuri heading to Tanunda. We ended up riding through the vineyards on dirt roads thanks to some awesome (???) map reading of Lawrie's (but Kitty reckons she would have gone the same way because it was shorter!).

The start of the dirt roads

We left the bikes parked up and made our way through Tanunda on foot, Lawrie noticed a wurst shop so we made a mental note to come back for one later.We spent some time at the local museum which contained a history of German pioneers in the Barossa. After all this German stuff Lawrie was hungry so we headed back for a wurst roll.

The entrance to Tanunda

Lawries Lunch

After lunch we walked the other half of Tanunda and tried to pickup a prescription for Kitty but the pharmacy wouldn't distribute because the original script was too old, even though it was filled by another pharmacy the month before! Because of this we had to make a doctors appointment for the next morning, which delayed our departure! We worked out our plans over a cup of coffee, jumped on the bikes and headed back towards Nuri.

There is a rode Nth of Tanunda called Para Rd (lots of things in SA have para in their name, not sure why) which has four wineries located close together. We had booked in for a winemaking tour at Richmond Grove so we checked out the area surrounding and then headed towards our tour.

Richmond Grove

Kitty relaxing at Richmond Grove

We were a little early so started out with wine tasting. We were the only ones on the tour so it was very personalised & we got to ask lots of questions. It was a good thing (for Kitty) that the tasting was first so we could get back on our bikes (Lawrie carrying more new wine) and started on the ride home. We stopped at a place that made Mead, we had seen this the day before & Lawrie always wanted to try mead (Mainly so he could say "Bring me my mead!" in a ye-olde king type voice). We bought a bottle of spiced mead, which kind of tastes like Chai tea. We stopped through at the IGA and then rode back to camp. Lawrie was carrying four bottles & 5kg of shopping on his sholders and handlebars, Kitty always wanted a basket for her bike, now it looked like a necessity.

Lawrie Loaded up on his bike

Kitty posing with her bike