Wine Country

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The Chateau! Oh the Chateau! The Contiki Chateau is a castle nestled into the Beaujolais wine region in France, with the most amazing view. With beautiful grounds and a massive pool, from anywhere on the grounds you can see for miles out over the wine country. They’ve also converted the old wine cellar into a pumping night club. The place is just impressive, the kind of place where you never get tired of saying “This is awesome!”

So the first night was a themed party, tight and bright, and well I had a tight bonds singlet but nothing that was bright. The solution, a bright pink bra with a pair of work socks for some additional cleavage (thanks Brit). The night was absolutely awesome, one of those nights where it was all awesomeness and no regrets :-D. But my god, the amount of strawpedos, wow!! Ok so a strawpedo is a Smirnov UDL, with a couple of bendy straws in it. So you fold down the straws and scull. 330mls goes down in about 3 seconds flat (or 2 if you’re elite ;-) ) Great night!

The next morning we had a picnic lunch atop this hill overlooking the wine region. About 20 groups of 8 people were given a picnic basket, and the vaguest directions of all time and we were on our way to find this picnic spot. The other crew actually got a map but we weren’t so fortunate. A few groups took a wrong turn straight out the gate, whilst after much debate, the rest of us headed up the road. Another fork that sparked more debate (it really is quite amusing seeing 100 people debate each and every turn, but for the record I was right on all bar one ;-) ). So anyway, heading up the hill and I’m keeping pace with the front of the pack just because I wanted to be the first one there. On the map the other crew got “there” was known as “the top of the world”, and I wanted to be the first one there. So we come into these woods and I look behind me to see where the rest of my group is and there was no one in sight. Not wanting to be lost in the woods, I caught back up with the group in front. Now after a few personnel changes, our 5 man (and women) walking team was formed. And did we cover some miles. Keeping a powerwalking pace we got completely lost in the French countryside. After a bit of direction from a local Frenchman that luckily spoke reasonable English, who’s comments were “This map is no good” and “Stick to the road, don’t get lost!”, we ended up finding another two that had broken from their group. Anyway, after more searching and a rocky hill that was about 45 degrees, we made it to the top of the world. So there turned out to be 7 of us from 4 different groups, at this amazing spot at the top of the world. Luckily, one of us had a picnic basket and another actually brought a bottle of wine, so we all enjoyed a picnic and a glass overlooking the beautiful French wine country. It was an epic adventure, but we made it. Diane, Sarah, Sydney, Jeremy, Holly & Emma, thank you guys for the best picnic I will ever have. We took a different route back down which happened to be the “right” way, and well let’s just say out 3 hour hike could have been done in around 30-40mins, maybe less ha ha. Fun day though. When we got back, it was funny hearing all of the stories from other groups that got as lost as we did, and the different places they saw. Dodgy directions, dodgier map, such a set up, fantastic. It would have been good to GPS all the baskets and watch these little dots on a screen just spread out over the countryside like ants ha ha. So yeah after that mission the rest of the day was spent chillaxing by the pool with a cold beer, and good mates. Great place :-D.
Oh yeah the wine was good too :-).

Keywords for the Chateau:
Un-snapping
“This is awesome” (like every half hour)
Top of the world
Kings cup
“This map is no good” – a nice old man

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