The White Elephant

So nice to wake up to blue skies and a leisurely day to enjoy the fine weather.  Our sandals weren’t quite dry from the day before so we set them up on the heater whilst we had coffee and breakfast.  It was surprisingly cool when we left around 9:30.  The sun was warm but the winds were cool. 

We headed out of town on the Prevally cycleway towards the coast.  It was a lovely trail, running parallel to the road for a while then picking up coastal views.  We had identified two possible morning coffee stops. Given the possible closures due to the power outage that we had been advised of yesterday, we had checked that at least one was open.  We continued along the cycle path to the White Elephant cafe which was in the most glorious location right above the beach and the many blues of the sea under sunny skies.

We loitered for a while, enjoying the view and excellent coffees and mapping out a path to Redgate Winery - our chosen vineyard for the day which we hoped was far enough south to avoid the power cuts.  We worked out that we could take the road most of the way but needed to use the cape to cape path to link the roads to the winery.  It was about 1.5kms, so we figured that we could push the bikes if need be and save ourselves around 6kms if we returned the way we had come, including a massive hill. 

The track was rideable in parts but occasionally the sand was deep, necessitating some bike pushing.  Definitely a good decision though as we were soon back on the road and heading up the hill to the winery. I had my fingers crossed, as I had neglected to call to see if they were open, as it was too early to ring when we were leaving.  Fortunately they were open and very welcoming.  There was already a big group enjoying a tasting but they squeezed us in and we tried a few of the whites and a couple of reds but were not as enthused with the wine.  We settled on a bottle of the Rhapsody in Red - their best selling wine and very easy to drink.

Once we conquered the immediate hill, it was easy riding back to Margaret River and we passed Xanadu with its closed sign due to the power outage.  We took the advice of our fellow tasters the day before and made our way to the Brewhouse for lunch.  There was a wide choice of beers and Simon settled for the “in the Pines” Hazy IPA and a Red IPA.  I was taken by the Pines IPA and we enjoyed a second glass after our excellent lunches of squid salad and the roast of the day for Simon.  As we were readying ourselves to leave a guy stopped to talk to us. He had recognised us from the vineyard.  He was part of the big group that was walking the Cape to Cape.  We chatted for a while and compared our experiences of the wet weather the day before.

We wandered through town in search of dinner provisions and picked up supplies for a picnic from the Margaret River Chacuterie before heading out to the industrial estate to see what was on offer at Blue Ginger Fine Foods.  There was a big selection and we selected some ravioli and pasta sauce for dinner, deciding to keep the picnic provisions for lunch tomorrow.  A quick stop at Woolworths for a few more supplies and we were soon home and enjoying a glass of the excellent Shiraz from Flametree with an easy dinner to look forward to.

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