Barossa Valley, part I

I recently had the good fortune to spend some time in Australia, enjoying a spot of cricket as England enjoyed a spectacular resultagainst the old enemy. Marvellous.

I managed to spend a couple of days in South Australia's Barossa Valley, a place I'd visited before, and was glad to return to. I was accompanied by my brother Anthony, who by some neighbourly connections in Hong Kong got us an introduction to a local resident, Fireman Bob. More on him later.

The trip started with me missing my original flight from Brisbane due to a time zone vs mobile phone technological stuff-up. Thankfully I made it onto the next and little bruv didn't have to wait too long at Adelaide airport where we were due to meet.

I shared the flight with the Australian cricket squad, which felt slightly odd as they filed down the plane in the middle of cattle class, passing various senior members of the Barmy Army. I also managed to have a quick chat with Geoffrey Boycott at the luggage carousel, where he managed to answer my incisive question "Did you enjoy the Brisbane Test then?" for fully two minutes before moving onto other subjects centred mainly on himself.

Qantas then managed to make up for successfully sorting out my flight, by leaving my bag in Brisbane, eventually getting it to me after multiple broken promises more than 24 hours later. I suppose I should be grateful they got it to me at all.

We stayed for a couple of nights in Angaston, at the Barossa Brauhaus Hotel, which sounded a lot grander than it was. It was friendly, clean(ish) and cheap. No worries. Dinner was at the 40's cafe, where we were attracted by the claims for multiple award-winning pizza. In short, they didn't disappoint. I was also pleased to find a pretty reasonable winelist, so the food was accompanied by a Rockford Rod & Spur, which was incredibly good value at $38 (members mailing list price is $30).

Towards the end of dinner as we pushed large bits of uneaten pizza around the plate - they were too big for our weedy pom palates, we got chatting to the chef and proprietor, Damon. We chatted about the visit, the pizza and the wine list among other things. When we mentionedthe reason behind the trip was my 40th birthday, Damon took it upon himself to invite us to dinner for the next evening, with a dining/wine tasting club Secret Men's Business. Of course we accepted, and then wobbled off to our hotel for a good night's sleep.