Barney Bentall is a Canadian gem. Multitalented, Bentall is a platinum-selling and Juno Award-winning musician with a deep-rooted solo career, but is best known for being the leader of Vancouver’s much loved Legendary Hearts, and the driving force behind the Grand Cariboo Opry.
Bentall’s got a great new project. He is helping raise funds that benefit Canadian Olympians by hosting and entertaining on food and wine tours of Europe. Tough job. We met up before he left for the continent, and he promised to send us some postcards. Here’s the first one.
Hi there, my name is Barney Bentall. I am a rock ’n’ roller, a folksinger, aspiring bluegrass player, a dad, a granddad, a raconteur and a part-time rancher. My wife Kath and I are on bicycles, making our way from the French Mediterranean to the hills of Tuscany.
In Italy, we will meet up with fellow musicians Jim Cuddy, Colin Cripps and Anne Lindsay. We will be hosting two weeks in Borgo San Felice with Olympians Marnie McBean, Curt Harnett and Chandra Crawford. We will all be there because of an organization called Gold Medal Plates. This is a culinary runaway train that tours the country annually and crowns the Canadian chef of the year!
Gold Medal Plates auction off amazing trips throughout the world with athletes, musos and wine gurus. We host, entertain and in Kath's and my case, help with the cycling. Cycling is a big part of the Italian trips. The scenery is second to none and I'm in it for the get-out-of-jail-free card when it comes to Italian food and wine! The bulk of the proceeds go to our Olympic athletes and to date, Gold Medal Plates have raised more than $5 million for the cause. This is huge and I think it was a big factor in the banner year our Olympians had in 2010.
We landed in Nice, France, and hung out there for a bit before shipping my guitar and our bags to Italy. We threw a change of clothes in our panniers and hit the road. Simplicity. We'll get there by a combination of pedalling and train travel along the coast. Today saw us riding high above the electric blue Mediterranean looking down at Monaco and wondering what kind of clock you would have to punch to own one of those yachts. Not for a Canadian rock ’n’ roller! Heh heh.
We are on our way to the fabled five seaside towns of Cinque Terre. We have never been there in our travels and we're pretty stoked. They had devastating floods there last October. From there we will go through Pisa and start making our way inland from Cecina through the town of Volterra and in to the land of the black rooster – our beloved Chianti! I will continue this when we all get together.
Ciao,
Barney (or as they refer to me in San Felice, Bernardo)
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