After Vasse Felix Lunch: Three Routes

Lunch at Vasse Felix is the easiest part of the day. The hard part is what you do with the three hours of light that come afterwards.

I send people to Vasse Felix all the time. It's the oldest winery in the region, the food is good, the art collection on the walls is the real thing, and Pamela and I have eaten there often enough that I know exactly the slightly heavy feeling you get standing in the carpark afterwards trying to remember where you parked the car. You've drunk a glass of something serious. You don't want to drive far. But you've also got the afternoon ahead of you and you'd like it to count.

Here are the three routes I give people, depending on what they want.

Photo: Vasse Felix, CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

You can book lunch at Vasse Felix directly through their website. Aim for the early seating to give yourself the afternoon, 12 or 12:30, and you'll be back in the car by 2:30 with everything in front of you.

This one's for the people who've had a glass too many and need to walk it off.

From Vasse Felix, head west on Caves Road and then up to Yallingup. Park at Smiths Beach or at the Wyadup carpark above the rocks. Walk the Cape to Cape section south from there. Twenty minutes is plenty, an hour if you've got it. The track sits up on the cliffs and you can see a long way out. The wind picks up in the afternoon and that's exactly what you want at that point in the day.

Photo: Lasthib, CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

The thing about wine and walking is that they work better together than people give them credit for. A good meal sits a lot lighter after thirty minutes of coastal track. By the time you're back at the car you'll have your appetite for the evening sorted and your head will feel earned again.

Cape to Cape day walks near Yallingup

This is the route for couples without kids, for visitors who like to be outdoors, and for anyone who finds that lunch with wine in it tends to fall asleep on them otherwise.

This is the slow route. It's the one I take most weekends when I'm coming back from somewhere south.

From Vasse Felix, instead of cutting back across to Bussell Hwy, stay on Caves Road and head north. The road runs through karri and marri country, then opens out into the paddocks behind Dunsborough, and finally curls into Yallingup. It's twenty minutes longer than the highway and worth every minute. The light through the trees in the late afternoon is the reason I never drove a delivery van for a living. I'd never have made it past Margaret River.

One stop on the way: Smiths Beach. Pull in, walk down to the sand, stand for ten minutes. It doesn't matter what the weather's doing. Smiths in the afternoon is always worth the detour.

Photo: David Stanley, CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Smiths Beach the way locals do it

After Smiths, the gallery is eight minutes from there on Blythe Rd. This is the route I'm partial to, obviously. People who take it tend to drift in around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, when the light is coming sideways through the jarrah walls and the workshop is winding down. Pamela puts the kettle on. We talk for half an hour. Nobody buys anything most of the time. That's not the point.

Gallery is Route B. Blythe Rd, Yallingup, ten minutes from Smiths Beach. Jarrah walls, southwest limestone, workshop window. Google Maps sometimes misdirects via Wildwood Rd. Stay on Bussell Hwy, turn at the Carbunup store, then Blythe Rd. If the flag's flying, we're open.

This is the route for visitors who want the afternoon to be a slow descent rather than a second act. Wine lunch, scenic drive, beach, gallery, dinner somewhere local. It's the day I'd plan if I were visiting.

If you finished lunch later, say you took the 1pm sitting, you've got a different shape of afternoon to work with.

Head back to Yallingup via Caves Road, drop your bags wherever you're staying, and then make it out to Canal Rocks for the sunset. From most of the village it's a five-minute drive. The sun goes down behind the granite and the water funnels through the channel in colours you don't quite believe are real.

Photo: Lasthib, CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Take a jumper. The wind picks up after sunset and the granite gets cold quickly. Bring a thermos if you want to stay an hour. Some of the best evenings I've had down there were ones I nearly didn't bother with: a grey afternoon that turned gold for ten minutes around 6 o'clock.

Canal Rocks at sunset

This is the route for people who want one beautiful thing at the end of a day that's already had one good thing in it. No walking, no driving in circles, just a slow drive home and a still half-hour at the rocks.

Got the day to spare? Run them in this order on different days of a long weekend: B on the arrival day to settle in, A on the second day to clear your head, C on the third for the goodbye. That's the shape of a good Yallingup weekend in my book.

the cellar doors near Yallingup

Most of the best afternoons I've had in this region weren't the ones where I tried to do something. They were the ones where I had a good lunch, took the long way home, and let the place do its work. Vasse Felix is a fine place to start an afternoon. The afternoon itself is the part you can't book.