So, eleven weeks after we left Edinburgh, we are almost finished packing and ready to head to Cape Town for our flight home via Heathrow.
It seems like the right time, we have had a great time during our stay here at Pearl Valley and I'm sure we'll be back here, but Edinburgh beckons and hopefully Spring will have arrived by the time we get there.
It has been interesting to see how the weather has changed here as Summer has turned to Autumn and although today was a bright sunny day with the temperature pushing 30C, it was a cool 12C in the morning and last week I heard a Cape Town radio station forecast a 'chilly 20C'.
For the first time, we have been here to see the leaves changing on the trees and on the vines. When we arrived in January, the vines were bright green and laden with grapes waiting to be harvested. Now, the leaves are a pale yellow, a deep red, or brown and we passed one plot today where they had already been pruned for the winter.
We've had quite a busy social life with Sue and Ally and Cam and their friends from the UK who have visited, and also with the people we have met here at Pearl Valley. With one or two exceptions, we even got on well with the people we met on our trips away.
Although we have visited a good number of wineries, there are still many, many more to investigate - enough for a few years of future visits. We stuck to our self-imposed rule to only buy wine from the cellar door and have found a number of very drinkable wines - from a variety of grape cultivars and in many different styles.
Another memorable trip to SA with a variety of different experiences which only serve to make us more determined to keep returning.
All that remains is to load up the car, hand back the keys of the house and see what champagne BA are serving in the Lounge this year.
There is a good chance that my blog entries will not survive our return home - as usual - but Linda is keen that I keep it going because it is such a useful record of where we have been and what we have done. This appears to be increasingly important as memory becomes more fallible.
Watch this space - I'll definitely have to report on the Buchu Gin experiment......
It has been interesting to see how the weather has changed here as Summer has turned to Autumn and although today was a bright sunny day with the temperature pushing 30C, it was a cool 12C in the morning and last week I heard a Cape Town radio station forecast a 'chilly 20C'.
For the first time, we have been here to see the leaves changing on the trees and on the vines. When we arrived in January, the vines were bright green and laden with grapes waiting to be harvested. Now, the leaves are a pale yellow, a deep red, or brown and we passed one plot today where they had already been pruned for the winter.
We've had quite a busy social life with Sue and Ally and Cam and their friends from the UK who have visited, and also with the people we have met here at Pearl Valley. With one or two exceptions, we even got on well with the people we met on our trips away.
Although we have visited a good number of wineries, there are still many, many more to investigate - enough for a few years of future visits. We stuck to our self-imposed rule to only buy wine from the cellar door and have found a number of very drinkable wines - from a variety of grape cultivars and in many different styles.
Another memorable trip to SA with a variety of different experiences which only serve to make us more determined to keep returning.
All that remains is to load up the car, hand back the keys of the house and see what champagne BA are serving in the Lounge this year.
There is a good chance that my blog entries will not survive our return home - as usual - but Linda is keen that I keep it going because it is such a useful record of where we have been and what we have done. This appears to be increasingly important as memory becomes more fallible.
Watch this space - I'll definitely have to report on the Buchu Gin experiment......
Safe journey home and hope to connect soon. Yes please keep the blog going Richard
ReplyDelete