It's a few months out yet, but I've set a tentative date for the second Dirty Weekend Cruise, which will be the April 20th to 22nd.

We'll be heading down to Margaret River again for at least part of the weekend, visiting some of the wineries we visited this time and a fair few new ones as well.

I'll post up more info as it comes to hand, so keep an eye on this thread and feel free to post up any feedback on the weekend as it shapes up.

I've got a list of wineries I'd like to visit in mind, which includes the ones we went to last time, and a couple of new ones...

Berry Farm
Brown Hill
Devils Lair
Happs
Mongrel Creek
Palandri
Redgate
Rivendell
Rosabrook
Sandalford
Serventy (organic winery)
Swings and Roundabouts
Willespie
Xanadu

We'll also visit the Margaret River Chocolate and Cheese Factories and the Bootleg brewery.

Please post up with any suggestions of other places to visit while we're in the region. This is going to be a 3 day cruise, so don't worry if it's not near any of the other places on the list. There are also a few places on Caves road near Swings and Roundabouts I'd like to visit.

<edit: added a few more wineries to the list>

I'm going to be changing the date for the cruise, as a WA round of the Drift Australia championship has just been announced for that date...

ok... is looking like the weekend after the Westernationals now, the 9th and 10th of March, 2007 - this is dependent on the WASCC's calender for race meetings at Wanneroo agreeing with me...

ok... due to a few events popping up, I've re-scheduled the cruise for the 20th to 22nd of April, and I plan on sticking to this date...

Here's a snapshot of where the map is at currently....

Well, we're back from Margaret River and have had a great time, the bank balance has suffered pretty bad though, we managed to spend over a grand in 3 days, but that goes with the territory I guess, almost all of that went on wine. Both k8 and myself had a great time and are looking forward to going back, probably around September / October.

The only downside to the weekend was the poor turnout, I was really hoping to get a few more people along than we did, but you get that. We ended up going to 2 breweries (Cowaramup and Bootleg), the 2 cheese factories (Margaret River and Fonti Farms, who stock a lot of the same stuff, but Fonti Farms has Metricup Gold), the Margaret River chocolate factory and fudge factory, the candy factory (Candy Cow) in Cowaramup, Yalingup Beach and 16 wineries. Oh, and we found time to stop in at Simmo's in Dunsborough for an icecream.

Off the top of my head, the wineries we visited were:
Maiolo
Beckett's Flat
Treeton Estate
Rosa Brook Estate
Brown Hill
The Berry Farm
Serventy Wines
Redgate
Xanadu
Howling Wolves
Palandri
Vasse Felix
Willespie
Sandalford
Happs
Swings and Roundabouts

I came home with 33 bottles of wine, 2 blocks of cheese some jam and some wine glasses. And a whole heap of photos.

I've picked out a few photos and put them up here:
Dirty Weekend Photos