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Stellenbosch Vineyards

Last weekend I had a really extraordinary experience. A fun run with a wine tasting!

These two usually do not come often in combination, but I must admit it was a well organized event which I enjoyed very much – and no, I didn’t have any wine as for me it doesn’t go down well at 9 am while running 12.5 km through the vineyards.

The event was the Cellar2Cellar fun run/walk and the route started at Blaauwklippen wine estate in Stellenbosch, Cape Town and lead us through the vineyards of several smaller wine farms (each of them providing a stand outside for wine tasting), through the fields, along olive trees and beautiful flowers and back to Blaauwklippen. The whole route was just so amazing and to experience the scenery that way was really awesome, especially as most of these paths on the wine farms are usually closed to the public. I must admit I normally only run smaller distances (4 km or so, or even less doing intervals) because I easily get bored with running. But this time, every few k’s there was something new to discover, pretty Cape Dutch wine farms that I had never heard of before, beautiful trees flowering in light purple, you could smell the horses and the dry grass and so on, so that I barely noticed the time.

I took many pictures on the way and as I was walking uphill, I had my rest phases and was rather disappointed than exhausted when I saw that the finish line was close. It took me about 1h 40 mins from start to finish, but there were still people coming in about 2 hours later than me, obviously putting the emphasis a bit more on the wine tasting part. But who can blame them with so many good wines originating here from the Stellenbosch area!

I mentioned in an earlier post that one way to motivate me to go for a run was to collect positive impressions. Here I got plenty of them! I guess I am now hooked to trail runs and I am definitely having a look for the next event!