Laura arrived at Claire & Luke's apartment at about 16:30 and we quickly packed all our bags into her boot before setting off. We had planned to meet James on the way as he works between Perth and Margaret River. It was a little bit of a squeeze for those couple of hours with all 5 of us in Laura's Getz and there were times we were worried the car was going to give up on us but despite being bumper to bumper with traffic we did eventually make it to the layby that James was waiting for us. By the time we arrived, he had been sat waiting for 50 minutes so he was very keen to get moving as he was desperate for a beer. So the boys jumped out and into his car, cracking open their first beer of the trip as they did so. 
 
We were still about 2 hours away from Margaret River so we were keen to get there without too many interruptions . The only stop we made was at Bunbury where we pulled in the car park of Coles hoping to get supplies for dinner and breakfast but, despite it only being 18:45, everything was closed! Instead, we called into a garage to get essential bits and decided dinner would just have to be a takeaway, shame!!!
 
We pulled over in the centre of Margaret River at about 8pm, where James & Laura knew of lots of takeaway options and ordered 3 large pizzas, chips & wedges to share! The boys waited for the pizzas and went for much needed toilet breaks as they had had several beers by now, while the girls drove to the house. Once we reached the driveway to the house, we were surprised to find it was just a winding dirt track through thick trees all the way up to the car port. Once we had worked out the key lock and managed to get inside, we were amazed at how beautiful the house was! It really was even better than the photos on the website had suggested and I'd fallen in love with it based on those!!! We quickly chose bedrooms before getting to the most important job of the evening, opening the wine! We all commented on the fact that despite us only knowing each other for a couple of months in mine & Claire's case and Laura only a couple of weeks, the way we all chatted so easily and openly, you really would have thought we had been friends for years! It's so lovely when you meet like minded, easy going people and I feel very fortunate to have 2 such lovely new friends!
 
About half an hour later, the boys arrived with the pizzas, after having a bit of difficulty finding it because they were looking for 192 (which doesn't exist) instead of 219 . When they arrived, even they were impressed with our new home! Once we had devoured all the food and we all had a good laugh over dinner, we retired to the lounge which sounds very sophisticated but in fact it was quite the opposite as it wasn't long before the box of goon was opened and the drinking games started!! We had great fun playing horse racing, on the bus and chase the ace. Fortunately for me, luck seemed to be on my side and I avoided losing nearly all of the games. Not so lucky were Laura, James & Matt who lost lots and had to consume rather a lot of goon! It turned out all the wine, beer and goon that was supposed to last all weekend was actually all gone except for just a few beers! We finally called it a night at about 2:30am as we had a pretty early start and it was becoming clear there were probably going to be a few nasty hangovers!!
 
In the morning, amazingly I was the first one up! The only other time I have been up before Matt on this trip was when Andrea was baking on Boxing Day, that's how momentous this is!! I had a quick tidy up of the lounge and kitchen before popping the kettle on and making everyone a much needed cup of tea or coffee . Once Matt was up, he and Claire got started on making everyone pancakes for breakfast while we all got showered, dressed and ready for the day ahead! As you can imagine wine wasn't the first thing on our minds yet.
 
At about 10:30am, the Bushtucker tour bus pulled into the driveway and Linda, the very friendly driver, jumped out to greet us all. We were the last pick up so she quickly introduced us to the rest of the group, remembering all our names in seconds! Impressive! She talked us through the itinerary for the day...
 1) Hay Shed Hill (winery)
 2) Knotting Hill (winery)
 LUNCH
 3) The Grove (liqueurs)
 4) Woody Nook (winery)
 5) Cheese factory
 6) Chocolate factory
 7) Cheeky Monkey - (winery & brewery)
 
Hay Shed Hill
Our wine guide was named Oof (we think he was from Holland) and he was very knowledgable about wine. Here are just a few of the things he taught us... 
 "Your taste buds change every 7 years so what you like the taste of now may change in a few years time."
 "When it says on the label of a bottle of wine that it tastes of vanilla or peaches, that is just the taster's opinion as no flavourings are added so technically they just taste of grape!"
 "In a mixed wine, e .g. SBS (Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon) or SSB (Semillon/Sauvignon Blanc) there is more of the wine which comes first on the label than there is the second, usually 60%/40%."
 "Rose wine is made from the same grapes as red wine, they just take the skins off sooner than if they are making red wine."
 "Tea has a lot of tannins in it and so does the skin of red grapes so that's why it stains your teeth!"
 Our first drink of the day was a champagne and as you can imagine as soon as we smelt it, all we could taste was last night's goon, so it was going to be an interesting morning. As everyone went about swirling their wine, smelling it and then sipping it, James had adopted the technique of swirling it then necking it. He seemed to be struggling a bit as he was also downing several glasses of water. At this winery, Luke's favourite was the 2011 Hay Shed Hill Cabernet Merlot and Matt thought the 2010 Block 8 Cabernet Franc tasted of pine trees??? It didn't really but it was just him being daft and getting into the spirt of it . Our favourite quote of the day was Oof saying, "If you're a yeast bacteria, don't drink alcohol!" Random but probably very true! As stupid as it may sound, at the end if this tasting, Matt still seemed to think last night's goon tasted better than all the wines we had just tried. 
 
Knotting Hill
This winery is owned by Brian & Michael Gould, father and son. They planted 77,000 vines on 40 hectares of their 70 hectares of land in 1997. They built a large lake on the land which took 9 months to build and has not dried out despite extremely dry seasons. They introduced marron (big prawn type crayfish) and silver perch to the lake which you can feed and they later fish and sell in the restaurant! Their wine is not sold in any bottle shops but has won lots of awards, they are extremely proud of the fact that their Knotting Hill Estate Cabernet Merlot was given 94/100 by esteemed wine critic James Halliday. Their claim to fame is that Julia Roberts got married there in 2005. The media got wind of this and helicopters surrounded the winery trying to get an exclusive shot but it turned out to be a local lady named Julia Roberts not the famous one! We had our bush tucker lunch here which was delicious! It included crocodile (which tasted a bit like pork and was very oaky), kangaroo (which is low in protein, high in cholesterol and only 1 .7% fat), Kakadu plum (which is like a sweet olive and contains 6 oranges worth of vitamin C) and a desert lime (which acts like a mouth freshener). Lunch had turned up just at the right time as by now everyone was getting a bit wobbly and acting a bit immature as the wine seemed to be topping us up from last night. So, stopping for dinner calmed everything down a bit. On the plus side, we had found a lovely white wine which everyone really liked so we quickly bought 3 bottles and drank one with lunch. With everyone getting a bit silly during the tasting before lunch, having a bottle for lunch may not have seemed our best idea but it went down a treat actually!
 
The Grove
As soon as we walked in here matt decided to pick up a huge bottle of liqueur from the rack as it was shaped like a big rifle, the only problem was it was quite wedged into the rack (probably for a reason) so as he pulled it out it came out so quick it banged onto the under side of the shelf above nearly breaking the neck off!!! As Matt's heart restarted, Linda had seen this and quickly told him to put it down as it's worth over $500 . Eeek! Big sighs all round. We tried 5 drinks here: Semillon Port, Shiraz Port, Raspberry Liqueur, Killer Koala Cocktail (butterscotch, chocolate & cream) & Turkish Delight. The drinks were pretty hard to drink as they were really strong but were really sweet so Matt actually liked these more than the wine. The two men serving were very out going and jokey as they put on a bit of a show for us, they were quite offensive and rude to some of the people especially to Glenda, an older lady on the trip, who was by now quite tipsy, but it was all in jest and she took it well. We had a good time anyway but we were quite glad to get out and thankful to do so relatively unscathed!
 
At 14:28, on our way to the next winery, Laura decided to serenade James with a beautiful rendition of "It's in his kiss" by Cher! Beautiful!! Also Linda played "Roxanne" by The Police. During this song, every time it says 'Roxanne', the boys have to stand up then on 'red light' the women have to stand up. This was hilarious as we drove down the road. A quite drunk Glenda just couldn't figure out when to stand up or not so after getting it completely wrong for a while she just stood up and danced in the middle of the aisle for the rest of the song as everyone else just rolled about laughing .
 
Woody Nook
Stephanie was our wine guide here and she gave us 5 white & 5 reds to try. Their first vines were planted in the 1970s and their first crop was in 1988.My favourite quote from here was, "Seen it all, done it all, can't remember most of it." This wasn't one of our favourite wineries as we all had to sit around a table so it didn't feel quite as relaxed as the other ones, the portions seemed to be getting smaller and it felt like we were rushed through each wine with no explanation.
 
The cheese & chocolate factory were good but we have been to lots before so they weren't that exciting besides, by now, all we wanted was wine!! The only amusing thing about the chocolate factory was how everyone shovelled lots of chocolate into their hand and walked about eating, but with it being so hot it quickly melted and everyone was left with a handful of melted chocolate to then set about licking off.
 
Cheeky Monkey 
This is mainly a brewery but also has a winery. Realising this was free, we headed straight to the wine tasting area! A lovely young man from California gave us lots of tasters and I learnt through him that I like dry to off dry white wines and of course rose! Claire & I really liked a particular rose so we treated ourselves to a bottle to have later! After we had polished off enough wine, we made our way to the brewery area and ordered a taster plate of beers and ciders between each couple . These beers were all pretty strange and not very nice at all. Even the boys were struggling with them so they all got necked quite quickly which then prompted everyone to feel a bit drunk again. It wasn't long before we were being called back onto the bus as sadly our wine tour was over and we had to head back!
 
Once we had dropped everyone off at their respective hotels, Linda dropped us & Glenda's group at Settlers bar in the main town. We had a great time there, chatting to all 3 generations of her family, drinking even more wine as we now knew how to order something we actually liked! While the boys were now enjoying having pints of beer finally and we had dinner. We even took James' pepper challenge where you are given 10 peppers, some of which are normal while others have been soaked in spices to make them extra hot! Either we are a hardcore bunch or we got sold 10 mild ones as none of us started gasping for water!!
 
Eventually, the wine got the better of us and we decided to head back to the house, where we stayed up for a while longer chatting before giving in around midnight and heading to bed! It was a brilliant day and I have definitely discovered my new favourite hobby!!
 
On Sunday morning, we all slowly surfaced, packed up our things and checked out of the house . We were all very sad to leave and would quite happily have stayed for the rest of the week! Once the cars were packed we set off on our leisurely drive back towards Perth.
 
First of all, James & Laura took us on a tour of Margaret River, with Dome the first stop for fry ups all round. Typically we hadn't had a fry up in over 4 months and now we've had 2 in 3 days but who can complain! We carried on then stopping at lots of different beaches and lookouts including Prevelly Beach and Surfers Point lookout. Then we drove through the town of Dunsborough. We stopped for a while at Busselton which boasts the longest wooden jetty in the Southern Hemisphere at a staggering length of 1841m, sure beats the Britannia Pier eh?! For some reason we decided it would be a good idea to walk to the end and back rather than jump on the tour train! It was a lovely walk but it turns out 1841m is quite a long way and takes quite a while to walk! It was good to stretch our legs though and, as a reward to themselves, the boys all bought themselves an ice cream before jumping back in the cars!
 
From there we drove directly back to Perth, dropping Claire & Luke off in Subiaco before making our way to Wickham Retreat. After catching up with the few people we still knew in the hostel and introducing ourselves to the new people, I excused myself to our room so I could Skype my Dad as it was his birthday and of course I had a lovely chat with my mum too! 
 HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!!!! Xx
 
We thoroughly enjoyed our weekend away at Margaret River. Good friends, good wine, great memories! Thanks guys!