Nationals 2006: Day 3, 22nd March
Scenic Drive

Eileen Cruise:

The next day was the scenic tour. We set off with our map and sheet of questions at 9am and didn't get back till 3.30pm. I remember that the info sheet stated that if you got back too soon you would be penalised for not enjoying yourself enough! Our first stop was not even on the route. We went to The Beach House in Kleinmond for a nice pot of fresh-brewed coffee which we enjoyed sitting at a table on their lawn overlooking the picturesque beach. The sun was shining brilliantly and all was well with the world. My only regret was that we hadn't hooked up with one of the 'out-of-towners' to bring them to this marvellous spot. On the drive we met up with several folk from all the different clubs and had fun taking photos and getting to know some of them a little better. The watering spot was a most welcome sight as we were quite hot by the time we got there. Not being a convertible, the GT gets quite hot inside with the black seats and all.



Thanks to Gain Mani for providing the refreshments, fizzy and otherwise. We decided to take the full route of the drive and really enjoyed the beautiful scenery - landscapes and seascapes alike. We stopped at the Peregrine Farm stall for our lunch break and enjoyed some truly scrumptious fare - home made pies and salads washed down with beer for Tim and fresh juice for me (the driver). I'm sure that Tim would've preferred to do the driving. His racing skills would've come in very handy, especially on that twisting coastal road, but it's my car now, so I do the driving. His job was to answer all the quiz questions, which he did without much help from me I must say. We both learned a lot from doing the quiz. I for one discovered that there is indeed a clock on Strand beach. We handed in our questionnaire to Jenny and hoped for the best. To be honest I wasn't too fussed about how well we'd done in the quiz. It was such an amazing outing that it didn't matter whether we'd scored well or not.

There was a wine-tasting event at the Wine Village not far from the Beach Club where most of us stayed. There were three white and three red wines on offer. I sampled all the whites, as that's what I prefer. Tim's into red wines, but he started off with me on the whites. When we got to the reds, the first one - their pride and joy - was the Southern Right. I tasted it and pulled a face - rather like one does when tasting lemon juice. It was quite sour and I made a wry comment that they must have dipped the whale into this one when they made it! I think the chap serving it might have heard me, but he didn't react to my rudeness. A well-bred vintner I'm sure, used to occasional crude comments from the undiscerning public. After that we had a ribald evening sitting in the Fabulous Fish Restaurant. We were part of a table of seven and six of us ordered their prawn special. I had yellowtail. Tim, my husband, raved so much about the prawns when the chef came to check on us that he sent us an extra platter with his compliments! We managed to get through several bottles of vino at our table, a fact that was borne out by the volume of our voices as we exchanged stories about the days drive etc. We managed to scare off at least two other tables in our room of the restaurant.

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