An "American" Lunch

It had been a while since we had all got together for lunch and the School Holidays are an ideal time as we can arrange things for a weekday. With Ann and Darrell coming from Beaufort, Fay from Geelong and Anita and I from Eltham, we usually choose somewhere in the Central West region. Today, our destination was the American Hotel in Creswick.

Normally we would start with a run around the Ring Road to the Western Highway but today, for something different, we drove through Melbourne. There was actually a reason for doing this - I had to drop a data projector off at the Assetic office in Victoria Street. With that little task completed, it was off past the Vic Market and the <insert current sponsor's name here> Stadium, over the Westgate Bridge and on to the Ring Road heading in the other direction towards the Western Highway. Traffic was chaotic with trucks everywhere - it really makes you appreciate living in Eltham.

The weather was overcast with the occasional patch of drizzle so the roof stayed up on the MX-5 for the cruise along the Western Highway to Wallace. Here we dropped off the highway and went cross-country to Creswick and the American Hotel. The hotel was pretty much what you would expect for a country pub on a weekday - not very busy with a reasonable range of meals on offer at reasonable prices. While the food was quite good and the kitchen service efficient, front-of-house was a different story. You couldn't describe it as Service with a Smile. It wasn't that terrible that you would say "never eat there again" but poor enough to say "try somewhere else next time". Mind you, that could be a bit difficult in Creswick as the Yanks are doing better that the Poms - the British Hotel was closed and boarded up.

After our unhurried lunch we took a stroll around town. It didn't take all that long as Creswick is now more a dormitory suburb of Ballarat than it is a historic village. It was now getting on in the afternoon so it was time to start heading home. With the Ring Road likely to be a "car park" by the time we got there, we left on the road to Daylesford on a cross-country route home. Although it was still overcast, the risk of rain seemed to have eased so we set off with the roof down. That lasted until Trentham East where, with threatening clouds and having survived one patch of rain, we decided to stop pushing our luck. It was just a well we did as we drove to some heavy rain five minutes later.

Our cross-country route took us onwards through Woodend and Romsey to Wallan where we joined the Northern Highway. Instead of continuing on to join the Hume Highway, this time we kept going east to Epping Road. A continuation of High Street that comes out through Preston, we headed down Epping Road as far as Wollert. Here we turned onto Bridge Inn Road and drove across through Mernda to Doreen and then turned down through Plenty and home. Less stressful that the Ring Road but still quite busy with all of the urban development that has happened around Mernda and Doreen (and is still going on...)