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Published: February 18th 2010
On Sat 19 Dec we caught the night train (because that was the cheapest travel option) South West to Maitland. We booked our tickets at the Byron Bay train station, however - get this, Bryon Bay has a train station but ... no trains!!! You can book the train but in order to embark you have to catch a bus to Casino - very bizarre!
THE NIGHT TRAIN
The night train was quite the experience, I believe the entire population of any surrounding mental institutions must either escape or be let out to travel the night train! We were surrounded by freaks and lunatics!! Consequently, we daren't go to sleep and the ten hour train journey passed slowly ... very slowly!!! Still, without drama or incident, the train arrived at Maitland at 6am on Sun 20 Dec. We were due to catch the 8am bus to Cessnock, then we realised we had overlooked one minor detail - it was a Sunday. The buses ran to a Sunday service. First bus due, 11.35am! Oh well! We found a very comfortable bench next to the platform lay on our bags and tried to catch up on some sleep in the deserted,
ghostly train station. That was until all the Saturday night revelers turned up to catch the early morning trains home and were so loud and boisterous it woke us with at start. At that point we realised the temperature had plummeted and it was about freezing. Torn between the need to save money and the desire to sleep and retain some warmth we stuck it out for another hour before deciding to venture out to the street and try our luck bartering with a local cabbie we had seen parked by the road. As luck would have it, we had stumbled across the most lovely cabbie in the history of cabbies. He took pity on us cold, weary travellers and agreed to a half price trip to Cessnock as there were no other people about anyway! On the 30km journey over, he did not pause for breath but nattered incessantly to us about family, work, life in Australia and a multitude of other topics! He was such a love!! I wish we could have taken him with us for the rest of our travels in Oz ... he was exceedingly entertaining and a genuinely lovely person!
THE CESSNOCK PUB
/ HOTEL
The Cessnock hotel appeared in front of us, like a mirage out of the 9.30am morning clouds. A renovated pub on the ground floor with high ceiling hotel rooms on the second floor. The bloke I had spoken to on the phone to make the booking informed me that the cleaning staff would be able to show us to our lodgings any time after 9am. Apparently, he had forgotten to inform them of that though!! A rather bemused looking young girl cautiously opened the back door the width of a small crack before asking could if she could help. After listening to me she asked us to wait whilst she got the duty manager. The next thing, an extremely inebriated 'lady' ploughed through the doors, painting the air around us blue (I guessed the curses were directed at the manager who had not forewarned of our arrival). After walking into the stairs, then a couple of chairs and the door frame, she staggered towards us. I was just about to do a runner when she gave a toothy smile, focused on us with one eye closed and slurred an apology. Apparently, there had been a huge party that
night (the Saturday) celebrating her birthday and the fact she had just won bar person of the year for that area, she wasn't working and the party seemed to continue with ferocity, so much so that many of the people still in the bar had not actually been to bed (her potent breath advocating this fact)! As she propped herself up against the wall she informed us that the room was ready, we could go up and get some sleep and have a free breakfast for any inconvenience. An unexpected surprise to say the least! Needing no further persuasion we ascended the stairs two at a time, found our room, a comfortable bed and took a powernap to restore our batteries!
A couple of hours later feeling rejuvenated we got ourselves up, showered and dressed and set out to explore the reason for coming out to the Hunter Valley - New South Wales' best known wine region, the first vines dating back to the early 1800's and synonymous with citrusy Semillon and earthy Shiraz! It was difficult to access the wineries without transport and we were too late to book a tour so we opted on taking a taxi
out to one of the major vineyards and just seeing what we could do by foot. After gaining recommendations from the pub staff and the cabbie we hailed, we ended up at 'Hunter Valley Gardens'. More like a miniature 'Centre Parcs' resort than a vineyard - the Gardens covered sixty acres, boasted ten different feature gardens, several different picnic areas next to lakes, four restaurants, eight km of walking paths, three shops and tons more - it was very impressive!
We grabbed a fabulous lunch before delving into the wine tastings, we sampled wines from the Gardens and also the surrounding vineyards: Tyrrell's, Tempus Two and Brokenwood. Only problem/difficulty ... the wines were SOOO good!! We bought a bottle at each vineyard! Paul was a little dubious about carrying our new purchases in our backpacks but I justified the extravagance stating it was Christmas within the week and all purchases would be consumed before we had our next flight!!
Full to the brim with wine, with no cooking facilities available to cook at the pub and in a bid to save money instead of eating out we did what it essential to do whilst visiting vineyards - bought
Watching Lightening
top right of photoa huge cheese platter and sat out on our balcony, watching the sunset over the vines - just perfect!
THE STORM AHEAD!
Mon 21 Dec we spent the morning exploring Cessnock town before walking the 2km to the bike hire centre. Nothing much to report about Cessnock, it was only a transit town on route to the vineyards, however, we did discover one little gem of a shop - a 'price busters' 'dollar' type shop selling Christmas goodies! The owner was an absolute hoot! He ran the shop with his Greek parents who emigrated to Oz decades earlier but still possessed very thick accents - boy, could the three of them talk! And when I was in there too - I think Paul lost the will to live - haha! My favourite item in the shop was an inflatable Santa Claus on a motorbike - it was great!!!
By lunchtime we had collected our bikes and set off cycling through the Valley. In fact for all of you who managed to open our Christmas card, the picture was taken this day out in the Valley next to the main road. It was hilarious, we put the camera on
self timer and had to run over to the vines, grab the sign and wait, guessing when the camera would take the pic!! All the cars passing on the road were tooting their horns and shouting Merry Christmas to us as we were dressed in our Crimbo hats and tinsel - it was very funny!! You see how much trouble we went to in order to send you all that card!!
By the time we had managed to take a decent enough shot and cycled the ten km to the next vineyards on our list the sky had started to cloud over and Paul said he could smell rain!!
The first vineyard was De Bortelli - the tastings were fairly average and we were not very impressed with the attitude of the front of house man! Mind you, could hardly blame him - by the time we cycled against the wind, up the steep hill to the wine tasting area we were dripping with sweat and looking rather disheveled. Still we were customers with the intention to buy so I thought he should have been a little more hospitable!
Next stop had to be my favourite winery
out of the entire Hunter Valley;
Peterson's Champagne House!!
It was the only winery in the entire region to specialize in sparkling wines or 'bubbles' as they like to call it. The building was magnificent, made of stone and overlooking a beautiful duck pond. We sampled a variety of different sparklings and purchased our two favourites: Dolce per Tutti and Chambourcin. The guy also threw in a bottle of Hibiscus flowers, small flowers in a red syrup whose petals open out when dropped in bubbly and give of a slight rose pink tinge to the glass - very girlie but I loved it!!!!
We were on our way to the next vineyards, up a particularity rickety and unsealed gravel path with an extremely steep incline when a huge clap of thunder sounded directly above us, so loud it was deafening and nearly knocked us off our bikes. I swear I have never heard thunder as loud as that in all my life - it was just earsplitting!!!
Within minutes the sky turned black and huge pellets of hail started to rain down upon us. A little frightened at the prospect of being caught out in the middle of
hundreds of acres of fields, on a bike whilst in a lightening storm, we did a 180turn and cycled our hearts out in an attempt to make it the 18km back to Cessnock before the storm crossed directly overhead! Impossibly the thunder seemed to get even louder and the forked lightening strikes hit down ever closer to our frantically spinning wheels! Hearts pounding from both the near misses and the energy expenditure from furious cycling we finally arrived back to the safety and shelter of the Cessnock pub just minutes before the storm passed directly overhead! With no other entertainment on offer in sleepy Cessna, we grabbed the other half of the huge cheese platter we had not finished from the previous night and sat out on our balcony, watching the lightening storm!
HELL IN THE HILLS IN THE HEAT!
It is at this point that I feel I should be writing a Bridget Jones style diary!
Tues 22 Dec, gained another two kilos, must strive to keep from gaining more weight ... well, starting from tomorrow as more wine and cheese tasting today!!! Ha Ha!
We set off early on our bikes as the circular route we
had planned to take us round the remaining wineries was over 30km. Not too taxing for a couple of Personal Trainers you might think ... think again. When combining the searing heat, an excessively undulating environment, unsealed gravel roads, a seemingly constant head wind, a backpack accumulating more wine with every stop and increasingly inebriated pilots - it was a mixture resulting in one of thee most challenging cycle routes we have ever done!!
Despite this we managed to visit a staggering ten vineyards including:
Golden Grape, Drayton, Ivanhoe, Tullocks, Rosemount, Lindemans, McGuigans and by the time reached the others was slightly worse for wear so can't remember the names but do remember we finished the day in a cheese factory!!
Exhausted (but very merry) we returned the bikes, staggered the 2km back to Cessnock and collapsed on the bed before attempting to pack all of our wine and Crimbo decorations into our backpacks!!
After an hour of squashing, shoving, pressing and squeezing we managed to fit the fourteen bottles of wine, two bottles of Voss Norwegian water and all the Crimbo bits into our luggage resulting in us having each to carry a backpack, a
front pack and two hand carry bags ... hhhhmmm the train to Sydney the next day was going to be an interesting, possibly stressful journey!!
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