The Hunter Valley

At the weekend we decided to get out of Sydney and head north to the Hunter Valley - some fresh air, fine wine & good food together with the great scenery were something to look forward to.

We arrived around 2pm on the Saturday (having need some extra sleep following the Australia Day celebrations) and stopped at the first of many vineyards on Broke Road. Over the course of the next 3 hours we visited a selection of wineries, everyone was helpful & friendly and Lucy & I struggled to go to have a tasting and not like at least 2 or 3 wines. Verdelho - which I had not really sampled before seemed to be particularly pleasurable in the intense heat.

Then off to our guest house - which was in Maitland. A quaint little place with only 6 rooms, each decorated in 'English Style' which basically meant chintz! The owners were very friendly & the breakfast they provided the next day was superb - the scrambled eggs with smoked salmon was delicious. For dinner we popped into the next town, 'historic' Morpeth which used to be a bustling, regional port. Well, the bustle seemed to have left long ago and most of the bars, cafes and restaurants were closed. We did however find a lovely little place with nice views over the river, Greek style to the menu & serving 'Ginger Beer Spiders' and excellent Lemon Meringue. We were planning on stopping around for a beer or two but thought better of it & headed back to the guest house for an early night (also watched movie called 'Regarding Henry' on DVD...makes you think that money isn't everything - in fact it can be a very bad thing).

The next day we started off at the Bluetongue brewery - we had discovered their alcoholic ginger beer (very good) a few weeks ago - and had hoped to go on a tour but got the timing wrong. Still, we had a sample of all of their fare (even Nobby's Light Beer was tasty) before purchasing a case of ginger beer and heading off to lunch.

We had lunch at Terroir restaurant - part of the Hungerford Hill Winery which we had visited the day before. A nice table by the window with exquisite views, a lovely bottle of chardonnay (we bought another couple on the way out!) and some great food (an interesting mix of australian & cantonese - I particularly enjoyed the quail in pastry on a chili jam, and the pork belly which Lucy ordered) made for a wonderful lunch.

With just a couple of hours left we crammed in another couple of tastings - including one at Piggs Peake which has the selling point of involving pigs in the title of it's wines - before finishing off at the Hunter Valley Cheese company (famous for it's washed rind cheeses).

On the drive back to Sydney, one could really feel the extra weight in the car (and that was just my full belly!) as I braked and accelerated. We hadn't really intended on buying so much wine but just couldn't resist!

Stopped off at an interesting place called The Entrance on the way home, Australia's 'Pelican Capital' as the sign stated... there was certainly a lot of pelicans, but also a LOT of caravans on the other side of the bay. Guess 'Caravan Capital' doesn't have the same cache!

We also noticed that a number of the place names around the Hunter Valley / Central Coast had a connection with the north east of England - Newcastle, Cumberland, Jesmond, Hexham & Morpeth to name a few - and this got me wondering why. It turns out that in it's industrial hey-day Newcastle (Coal River was it's 1st name after white settlement) was a coal port and a lot of it's first inhabitants were actually from the north-east of England themselves - so decided to name the place for home!