Bowral

Rob's surgeon runs a regular clinic in Bowral in the beautiful Southern Highlands. It's a great excuse for an overnight stay and a little bit of indulgence for us - extra pleasurable this time because Rob got such a good report - he'll only need annual checks after this!

Our first stop was for lunch on Friday, at Mount Ashby Estate vineyard on Nowra Road a few minutes drive outside Bowral on the way to Fitzroy Falls.....

 ..and a chance to try the well recommended La Pallette Cafe, overlooking the green paddocks and clumps of very contented looking Holstein cows, in the property's restored original dairy building.

 

We were the first to arrive for lunch - very hungry after an earlyish start from Canberra......
We chose a sunny table looking out to the grassy terrace (and the cows).

The menu was very French inspired. My pumpkin, feta, caramelised onion tart with pear, blue cheese salad with pesto lived up to expectations - especially teamed with our bottle of Ashby Estate Cabernet Merlot (very good). Rob was also delighted with his Beef Bourguinon Pie, potato and beans and our shared (local) cheese plate with honey glazed nuts.

This visit we stayed at Peppers Craigieburn - a charming older style hotel a few minutes drive out of the main township of Bowral. Our room had beautiful views out to the golf course and the undulating hills beyond.  The weather turned quite cool during our stay and it was great to enjoy these views from the other side of the big picture windows.

Our previous choice in Bowral had been Links House, a much smaller hotel on the other side of the township.  Given the choice we'd go back there next time as we really enjoyed the cosy ambiance and the beautiful a la carte breakfasts. The Craigieburn breakfast buffet left a lot to be desired and we missed all the cosy personal touches of the much smaller guesthouse!

We were all smiles after seeing Rob's surgeon - and it's good not to have to see him again for quite a while - despite the charms of this pretty town in this beautiful part of the world.

It's winter

We're not talking about why we were in Bowral the other weekend (this is a blog about delightful things after all!) but there were a few aspects of it we really enjoyed. Staying at Links House, opposite the golf course, was an unexpected pleasure. Built in 1928 as country guesthouse it has loads of character and charm while being immaculately maintained.  I won't forget the wonderful breakfast, cooked to order and featuring all local produce, in a long time.

The drive back to Canberra gave me an opportunity to photograph the Lake George wind farms on one of our early winter, big blue sky days.

Our new Conservative government is introducing legislation into Parliament to repeal the Carbon Tax this week and by way of introduction Joe Hockey, our country's enlightened Treasurer, has announced that this wind farm is a blight on the landscape - something ugly, that offends him every time he drives past!!!!  Obviously, open cut coal mines are much more to his taste.

We visited the very classy Bowral Farmer's Markets (takes place every second Saturday of the month) on Saturday morning. We resisted the temptation to buy a couple more cymbidium orchids in fabulous flower, but succumbed to the charms of the French guy flogging his smoked spiced sea salt and organic garlic.

Rob purchased a bagful of goodies fresh from local farms and was inspired to get cooking.

Another charm of cooler weather is the Sunday night roasts we enjoy with J & J and A & E. Joshy does a wonderful job with his spit roasts and the girls are the greatest fans of what he creates.

We always talk about the similarities (or not) between Abi and Ella - so I decided to present Exhibit A and B as evidence. Exhibit A (above) is a picture I took of Abi last night (age 2 years and four months). Exhibit B (below) is a picture I took of Ella at exactly the same age. I purposely chose pictures with similar positions and expressions. But even if you discount this you can easily see the similarities!

 .....but still some differences!

This girl is one cheeky monkey!

Abi loves playing with her big sister - which can result in some real disruptions at times. Ella's big girl, highly focussed activities are usually much too hard for a two year old to cope with.

Last night there was quite a long period of peaceful play with the wooden tiles from the Hungry Caterpillar set. Ella was stacking them into threes and then calculating 3 times multiplication formulas while Abi was happy matching apples.

... (and black olives).