Saying goodbye to KI and HelloBarossaValley

On Thursday morning we said a very sad goodbye to Natalie, Jack and Mark and headed off with James to Kingscote airport where we were picking up Ed after his few days off.We said goodbye to James at the airport as he was travelling to Adelaide for a meeting.

Ant and I are spending the night in Kingscote as we would have arrived in Adelaide very late at night if we had caught the afternoon ferry - Emma travelled to Penneshaw and we caught up with her the following morning for the 08:30 ferry and coach back to Adelaide.

It seems strange to be back in the city after so long in the wilderness - there is so much noise and traffic!!!After checking into our hotel and having a quick bite to eat, we met up with James, Rosie, Emma and Sarah for a drink - there were more volunteers in the pub in Adelaide than at the sanctuary!!Later that evening, Ant and I had arranged to meet up with Emma to go for a Chinese and she turned up with Anja who she had bumped into in the street!!

On Saturday morning we picked up our rental car (if feels good to be back in control of where we go) and headed for the BarossaValley wine region which is just an hour's drive from Adelaide.There are 80 vineyards with cellar doors here (where you can taste wine) but we only managed to visit 3 of them before headed off to our B&B for the night in a town called Tanunda, a town of around 4000 people and 4 Lutheran churches - a legacy of the early German settlers.

This beautiful region has a rich heritage of grape growing and winemaking dating back to 1842 with a very strong German influence.The region is renowned for its Shiraz, Riesling and Chardonnay wines.Our first stop was the Wolf Blass vineyard - a name well known to us at home, where we tried several different wines, including a sparkling pinot noir chardonnay which we bought.My favourite red wine is Merlot which Wolf Blass didn't have on their tasting list so the guy recommended another vineyard called Gibson's.Unfortunately, they didn't have any Merlots available for tasting either but we did get 2 bottles of unlabelled wine for $10!! (that's $5 each!!!).Our final visit was to Penfolds - another familiar name from home.

By now I'd had enough wine (and we had managed to buy 5 bottles) so we set off to find our B&B - the Blickinstal Retreat.Blickinstal which means 'view into the valley' is a beautiful rural bed and breakfast nestled into the foothills amongst vineyards in Bethany, five minutes from Tanunda, the heart of the BarossaValley. The panoramas across the Valley and beyond are simply stunning and the tranquillity of Blickinstal make it the perfect place after the hustle and bustle of Adelaide.After checking out the facilities (which were amazing!) we headed back into town to stock up on provisions for the next 2 days.We had just an hour to do our shopping before Sue (the owner) served afternoon tea - unfortunately she had forgotten to take the muffins out of the oven before going out so they burnt.

As well as afternoon tea, there was also a carafe of port in our room which Ant tucked into after dinner whilst watching one of the many DVDs that were available for us to borrow at no extra charge.The next morning after an amazing breakfast of poached peaches, cereals, poached eggs on toast with bacon, mushroom and tomatoes, we headed off for today's sample of the local vineyards.We had considered cycling today but as the temperature was set to reach 32 degrees Celsius (about 91 degrees Fahrenheit), we decided to stick with the air conditioned car.

First stop today was Jacob's Creek, another familiar name.We tried several of their cellar door only wines (these can't be bought anywhere other than the vineyard) after taking a walk to take a picture of the actual creek that the wine is named after.The Para Road wine path links four Tanunda wineries by foot but it was too hot to do even this "short walk".We managed 3 of them (Richmond Grove, Langmeil & Peter Lehmann) before heading back to the B&B for today's afternoon tea (and yes we did get muffins this time).Today we managed to restrict ourselves to buying just one bottle of wine.