Memorable moments: The Franschhoek flush

On a road trip through the Cape with my friend Chrisel, we stopped to visit her aunt, Tannie Tia. She lived in Franschhoek and was the personification of "Old World" Afrikaans elegance—posh, sweet, and surrounded by silver tea services and smartly dressed help.

The atmosphere in the drawing room was hushed and refined, which was a problem, because my stomach was currently staging a violent protest. Chrisel and I had indulged in a massive Indian feast the night before, and the spices were now demanding an immediate exit.

I excused myself and retreated down the hall to the bathroom, where I proceeded to deposit what felt like a biological weapon. I flushed.

Nothing happened.

I waited, heart hammering, and flushed again. Then again. The water rose, the contents swirled, but the exit remained stubbornly closed. Panic, cold and sharp, set in. I looked around the pristine room for a solution. I spotted a small bin, emptied its contents into the sink, and realized the bathtub was my only hope. I filled the bin with water from the bath and began a desperate, manual "power-flush," praying to every deity I could name.

After several frantic buckets and a near-flooding of the floor, the evidence finally vanished. I was sweating, my trousers were suspiciously damp from the splashing, and I’d been gone for what felt like forty-five minutes.

I walked back into the drawing room, trying to look "refined" while frantically rubbing my trousers with my hands to hide the water marks. Tannie Tia looked up with genuine concern.

"Graeme, are you all right? You were gone so long."

"Yes, Tannie," I squeaked. "All good. Just... admiring the tile work."

"Oh, thank goodness!" she sighed with relief. "I was worried you’d gone into the other bathroom. That one is giving us terrible trouble!"

I sat back down, took a sip of my tea, and realized that in the world of high-society etiquette, the difference between a "triumph" and "social exile" is exactly three buckets of bathwater.

Meeting up with Julian and Juliet in Durbanville

It was wonderful to see Julian and Juliet after so many years. We drove out to there beautiful home in Durbanville with its enormous garden. We got to see Antonio and Alessandro who are all grown up. Then Julian joined Antony, Jo and I on a visit to two local wine farms for a wine tasting and a delicious cheese platter. 

Wine route

Tasting wine in Hermanus

Highlights of a wonderful day in Hermanus and surrounds included ...

• A walk along the ocean front admiring the old harbour and stunning, rocky coast line.
• A delicious meal of grilled calamari and seared tuna.
• Revisiting the little stretch of coast where I scattered dad's ashes - a very emotional moment for me.
• Exploring the Hermanus wine route.  It's fantastic!  Lovely wine, very scenic and much less commercialised than the better know wine hot spots like Stellenbosch and Franschhoek. 
• The drive from Hermanus to Caledon (which I'd never done before and reaching) and discovering the lovely Spookfontein; a  beautiful farm in a sublime setting with delicious wine and port and a very friendly wine host who served us despite us arriving after closing time. 

Hermanus Wine route

The lovely Spookfontein

Beau Constantia

What a lovely setting to sip wine (delicious Appletiser in my case) and sample cheese. I'd forgotten just how beautiful the winelands are.  Amazing beauty just 10 minutes from where the family live.

Weekend at The Hunter Valley

Dani and I had a great weekend in the vineyards of Hunter Valley.  There was plenty of rain on Saturday, but that didn't stop us from visiting lots of vineyards and sampling plenty of wine.  

Some highlights of the weekend:

• Picking up Dani in Newcastle on Friday afternoon after she'd had a meeting there with other University sustainability managers.
• The amazing views from our room.
• A delicious pizza at a very nice restaurant on Friday night.
• Watching several episodes of "Breaking Bad."  What a great series, highly recommended.
• Visiting vineyards and trying lots of wine.
• Selecting delicious home made chocolates at a local chocolate shop.
• On Sunday morning, the best mocha and delicious crumble at a restaurant specialising in nothing but desserts.
• Checking out lots of great sculptures at one of the wine farms.
• Hunting down a bottle of sparkling Shiraz.
• Discovering that most of the ways out of the Hunter Valley were closed due to floods.  It took us quite a while to get back home!

Views of the vineyard from our hotel

view from hotel room

Delicious dessert for breakfast

One of the restaurants in Hunter Valley specialises entirely on desserts.  What an amazing selection of mouth-watering treasures they had.  And what difficult decisions.  I had Apple and Rasberry Crumble and Dani tucked into Lemon Merengue Pie.  The highlight, though, was the Mocha that came with a jug of rich, molten chocolate that we had to spoon in ourselves.  Best Mocha of my life and I've sampled quite a few!

Mocha doesn't come better

Dani wasn't being a glutton - half of that was mine!

Statues at a local vineyard

One of the vineyards we visited had a great art gallery and a statue garden.  Here are some of the statues that caught my eye.

When floods get in the way of home

We took an extra couple of hours to get home because it had been raining hard, and the first two routes we tried turned out to be flooded!

Mudgee

Mudgee was our last stop on our trip before heading back to Sydney.  This town is most famous for its surrounding vineyards.  Needless to say, we visited some of them and tasted some lovely wines.  My favourite was the Sparkling Shiraz - absolutely delicious it was.  The chap in charge of the final cellar we visited was presidedly tiddly (it was New Year's Day after all) and he allowed us to pour our own wine to taste while belting out some loud songs.  

The town itself was very attractive with some lovely buildings and churches.  On New Year's Day it was like a ghost town with everything shut except a local pub where we enjoyed a nice lunch.

The Hunter Valley

A great photographic weekend away including hot air ballooning, old buildings and beautiful horses and birds, great people

The Hunter Valley Gardens

Pepper Convent

Statues

Vineyards

Jumping

Well captured, Guy!