Monday 5 February: Adelaide to Clare Valley

Ellie drives us to the car hire company and we pick up our vehicle and head off on our own without her as she is working the next couple of nights. We drive north through Adelaide and eventually get into open countryside with gum trees and wheat fields. All looking very parched. The journey takes about 2 hours. Gradually the scenery changes and it's more hilly and there are vines. We find where we are staying, right on the Riesling cycle trail and collect our bikes and head off along the trail, which is an old railway line, presumably built for the copper mines nearby. It's incredibly hot and not ideal weather for cycling! It seems a curious mixture of gum trees and vineyards. We spot our first kangaroo just off the trail amongst the vines. There seems to more cycling than we anticipated, and less wine drinking! We get to Skillagaroo vineyard ( another Irish name along with Clare), and sample Chardonnay, Riesling , Gewurtztraminer and Rose and have a light lunch outside under a big olive tree. One of the wines is a "single contour" wine, as the wines are grown along the contour lines, and the winemaker considers this particular contour to be especially good! 

A hot sticky cycle back to Clare, with the eucalyptus trees shedding their bark along the road ( some look completely nude) and colourful parakeets swooping between the trees, to find a bottle shop to buy Pikes Riesling and then back to Rose Cottage for tea on the lawn (synthetic!)