On Saturday, we feasted on pancakes and fresh fruit, then moved house to Launceston.
We picked up boxes from the friendly folks at Cycology (brilliant name for your bike shop!).
A busker in the cityMuch of our remaining free time in Launceston we spent driving out of town searching for wineries. And golly did we find them.Wineries:1. Evenfall: yummy chardonnay and pinot noir, which are the varieties for which this region is most famous.2. Loira: wow, these folks make a bit of everything! We liked their cider, (which we were surprised to learn was made with golden delicious and pink lady apples!) and their syrah (rare here), and the syrah pinot blend. The pale ale was good too, but the gins were icky sweet.3. Moores Hill: lovely sparkling, chardonnay, and pinot, but the “grazing platter” kind of stole the show here. They are also entirely solar powered now, which is pretty cool. A lot of the vineyards have netting over their crops, as there are so many birds. Each net costs about 2-3k and can cover 2 or 3 100m rows of vines.“Birds” are hard on the un-netted grapes!4. Swinging Gate: Flis embarked on knitting at this point as they kept pouring me more samples…I enjoyed the frontignac (quite floral), and the pinot noir 2022 reserve, and a bunch of others… I think they would have kept pouring, but we left intending to get to Beauty Point.We visited Seahorse World, an informative center in Beauty Point.They breed zillions of seahorses for sale to zoos and aquariums across the globe.As well as seahorses,they had a couple leafy sea dragons (above), a massive bad-tempered (roid rage) lobster, and a few other rescued exotic fish.Part of the tour included an introduction to Tasmanian handfish, which are tiny, quite ugly-cute, and unique in that they don’t have swim bladders. Handfish are endemic and on the verge of being wiped out because of the loss of breeding habitat in the Derwent River; the center is working hard to raise awareness and reestablish populations.
With the end of our trip looming gloomily over us, and feeling a bit peckish having not eaten much all day, we stopped at a grocery store on our way home and shared a lil 1L tub of ice cream for a snack.
The laziest of roadside fruit stopsThe “Batman Bridge” is one of few Tamar River crossings. You can imagine the soundtrack that was happening in the car.
We went on a last-minute hunt for compression socks for F, which was ultimately unsuccessful. F says she’s not going to get any bloody DVTs anyway.
Thank you so much for the effort to share this greed adventure. I so look forward to each installment it’s calming And reassuring to read that amazing people are doing such things with their lives. Ok maybe the calming part slipped a bit upon hearing about Felicity’s errant appendix does not apply. Your response does.
I was lurking till I figured out how to get my password sorted.
Wish you all the best
Bill mc
BC by Cycle 
Thank you so much for the effort to share this greed adventure. I so look forward to each installment it’s calming And reassuring to read that amazing people are doing such things with their lives. Ok maybe the calming part slipped a bit upon hearing about Felicity’s errant appendix does not apply. Your response does.
I was lurking till I figured out how to get my password sorted.
Wish you all the best
Bill mc
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