– By George Dyke
The Niagara Region has long been a favourite destination for CAC outings. For the past couple of years, we have made it a regular summer event. This year we took advantage of our rain day delay to ensure a sunny and warm outing on Sunday, July 8.
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Marijke and I picked up Isabelle and Nazar Miszczuk near High Park in Toronto in our DS21 as Nazar was without a Citroën since he is presently restoring his 1939 Traction 7A. We assembled at Nebo Djurdjevic’s house in Oakville at 10 am, meeting up with Steve Loria, John MCulloch, Chris Deja, Jim Sciberas and Herb Arnds and his wife. We departed Nebo’s at 10:45, driving by the gorgeous homes along Lakeshore Rd. We continued along the shoreline of Lake Ontario, meeting up with Brian Chewter, and Bill Rea and his family who joined our convoy in Hamilton. Our first stop was the upscale Tawes Winery. Sietse and Petra Elsinga met us at Tawes in their 2CV as they live just down the road. And Lloyd McBride joined us coming over from nearby Brantford. As people gawked over the line of Citroëns assembled outside, we sampled Tawes’ outstanding wines at their indoor tasting counter.
From there we took a leisurely route through some lovely twisty back roads on the Niagara Escarpment, stopping for lunch at Creekside Winery who have a restaurant called Deckside. It features an open veranda to sit and relax while food is prepared on outdoor grills.
Afterward, we took another drive along some different back roads in the area, landing at Calamus Estate Winery and then finally Megalomaniac, a new winery (with outstanding wines) that sits underground in the top of a hill with overlooking views of both Toronto and Niagara Falls.
By this time it was late afternoon and Bill suggested that we go back along the Ridge Road of the Escarpment and drop down into Hamilton to stop at his pub “The Winking Judge”. It was a perfect way to wrap up an outstanding day! We took the Lakeshore Road back from Hamilton all the way to Toronto. How serene, particularly in my DS!