Day 7

We had no checkout time this morning, but we had a busy day of wineries to visit and the temptation of wine to start the day meant we left at the earliest time of the trip so far - 9.55 am! We started of driving, the first winery of the day was Burrowing Owl about 10km away. It was drizzling as we left, but snow clouds were hovering higher up the mountain. We didn't stay long at the Burrowing Owl, and moved on to the next on Clare's list. On the way, a sign caught my attention... so we pulled in. Desert Hills Estate winery had some great wines for so early in the morning, and it was here that we saw the first work being done too. This is harvest time, grapes are being picked and crushed and the second stages of wine making are starting to occur. As we were getting into the car, we spotted the forklift truck behind us start tipping huge plastic bins of grapes into a machine. Great fun to watch. We got back onto our planned route, but when we arrived the winery was closed. Not everyone can stay open at the moment, there's a lot of work to do with the harvest and relatively few tourists coming through... So many cellar doors are shut.

It was 11.15, and so we decided we could do 1 more winery before parking the car and walking. A quick check of the map showed another of the recommended wineries a short drive away, almost back in the centre of Oliver. In fact, we later discovered its the only winery that counts as being in town! Quinta Ferreira is a small Portuguese family run and owned winery. The son is the wine maker, sister in law the artist, one daughter the agent, the other in charge of marketing. When we arrive, the owner opens up shop for us. We pick up so much information from this place, like the fact everyone is stressing because they don't have enough space for all the grapes due to the bumper crop, and that none can pick today even though they are worried about the cold spell because its raining. Over an hour later we leave, having been stood around sipping wine and chatting with John the owner and another couple who walked in.

Now running a little behind on our schedule, we head back to the motel to drop off the car and start walking to our next stop - where we've also planned to get lunch. The walk is among the main road, then shortly up a hill and we were hoping to be able to just cut through to some of the other wineries up here, walking up and down the hill would be killer. Tinhorn Creek is really well laid out for inexperienced wine drinkers. They have the tasting room, and then the fermentation vats in a room you can self tour, while we were in they were checking each vat out. You can look into the barrel room, and also have a demonstration vineyard set up you can walk through and pick grapes and see the difference between vines. We start of with the tasting, spotting various others who we've been crossing paths with all morning. Tasting over, we head over to the restaurant for lunch and try a few more of their wines. Time has run away from us now, and by the time we sit down to eat lunch we have to rethink our afternoon. Luckily our server spots what we're doing and suggests that we can walk quite easily over the hill to the next winery instead of going down to the road and gives us directions. When we finally make it out of the restaurant ( eating and drinking and talking to others in there takes time) we go out for a look around the demo vineyard before setting off.

At first, the directions seem simple. From the top of the car park, follow the drive up the hill into the Golden Mile trail, and it will take you to the next winery. Make sure to take the path of the trail to get there. Easy - right? At the top of the carpark, we follow a driveway. It is marked as private property, but years in the scouts taught me that sometime people put up these funny signs when its a public footpath, and sometimes its because the public footpath is 100m away running parallel. When a man came out his house to ask what we wanted, it was quickly apparent this wasn't the correct path, but he very nicely told us to carry on up as the path we wanted ran parallel about 50m past his house, and then intersected the driveway so we were most of the way there already. Thanks Baden-Powell training!

The trail led up through the vines, eventually coming to a low wall with a large opening saying close the gate. No gate in sight, just a rattlesnake proof wall around the vineyard the gate was supposed to complete. No snakes were rattling so we carried on. Next was an electric fence, with a friendly warning that only the lower half was electrified so you could open it. This was clearly to keep the cows out, as one watched us come through, before walking of disgusted that we had remembered to shut it behind us. The trail climbed up and up, heading for the snow line not to far above us. Before wine was grown here, these hills had been mined for gold, and the trail was up top the gold mining area. All we needed was to get high enough to cross the creek the winery was named for and eventually we found an off shoot path, unsigned, going across. We followed it, trusting the server from lunch and our sense of direction to follow the winding, cow pat covered trail on a seemingly endless route across the mountains. This was supposed to be a shortcut, enabling us more wine drinking time, and while we could now see the target wineries below us, we were in the middle of a fenced of area, with a few friendly deer prancing setting not to far away! The path didn't seem to lead up to a gate, and with the clock ticking down we headed to an easily climbable portion of the fence and scrambled over right at the driveway to our next winery. As we walked along the driveway, I made the mistake of looking up. There  not 20m from where we climbed was a gateway through the fence. Cleverly hidden, and un-marked. Typical!

We made it with 15 minutes to spare, which was a shame as the assistant was really helpful and interesting, explaining what some of the local oddities were. We'd been hearing some pops and bangs all day, and we had initially thought them to be avalanche control explosions - something we'd become accustomed to in Banff. There hadn't been enough snow however, and they were far to frequent. These noises were made to scare off birds, deer and bears from the vineyard, all of whom thought it was a feast laid out just for them! We'd also seen a lot of sprinklers going, which we found strange as it had been raining and drizzling all day. The sprinklers were to cover the grapes in water, so in the cold weather the water would freeze, saving the grape itself. Come closing time we had to say good bye, but really appreciated the extra knowledge. Luckily, our final stop was just across the road, less than a 2 min walk. By this time we had visited 5 different wineries already, and after tasting the last few were ready to walk home. As we stepped outside the rain got heavier, so we decided to call a taxi and eventually made it home, cold wet and muddy!

Dinner was a leftovers meal, and the wine from the day had left us sleepy, so we had an easy night in, drinking tea to rehydrate. Tomorrow, we'll hit up the final wineries before moving on from the valley, and heading further west eeking out our time in Canada as long as we can.