McLaren Vale

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April 7th 2011

Published: April 7th 2011

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JohnRose

Abandoned Farm

Many of these in Flinders Ranges

Hi all
Sorry, but I didn’t realise how long it had been since our last entry. We have been having such a good time here at McLaren Vale with our good friends Alan and Justine. We arrived here two weeks ago (23rd March) after exploring the Yorke Peninsula, Clare and Barossa Valleys. We had heaps of trouble trying to get into a site on the way back up the east coast of the Yorke Peninsula, after a few days near the Innes National Park. Apparently, the V8 Super cars were competing in Adelaide that weekend causing a mass exodus of grey nomads from the city. We gave up trying to find a camp in the end and drove the extra distance up to Clare. Clare, like Margaret River in WA, is a famous wine growing area. The weather was much cooler with a few showers.

We stayed at Nauriootpa in the Barossa Valley, which was a lovely spot. We had three days there, exploring the lovely wine growing area. We did a loop day trip out to Burra, Williamstown and back to Nauriootpa and were pleasantly surprised by the lovely limestone cottages scattered around the area.

The drive down

Innes National Park map

Yorke Peninsula rout.

from Barossa was horrendous. Gale force winds and heavy rain in peak hour traffic through Adelaide!!! To make things worse, the electric brakes on the van were playing up so it was a bit of a nightmare trip.

We are staying in McLaren Vale Lakeside Caravan Park, which is a short walk into McLaren Vale town and only 10mins drive from Alan and Justine’s at Maslin Beach. Alan and I have had a few games of golf on some pretty challenging courses. Needless to say, I have struggled to break the 100 mark due to lack of practice. The exercise has been doing me good though.

Alan and I enjoyed last night watching a replay of the Carling Cup Final, which our team “Birmingham City” won against Arsenal a few weeks ago, much to the disgust of my brother in law Dave (Vile supporter).

Next week will be spent on Kangaroo Island with Alan and his grandson Cody, in a farm stay near Kingscote. There are plenty of places to explore over there and hopefully we can catch a few fish too.

Following KI, we will be flying to the Gold Coast for Easter.

Enjoy