20 Roads for 20 Years - Drive No. 7
The forecast was for a reasonably nice day so it seemed a good idea to get out in the MX-5. So out came the 20 Roads for 20 Years book to provide the inspiration. The run notes started at Airport West Shopping Town and headed to Wallan. As that didn't seem to be particularly exciting driving, we headed straight up the Hume Freeway and picked up where the run headed off to Romsey. We had driven this road in the reverse direction several times but this was a first heading this way.
We rolled into Romsey for a brief stop where we discovered that although it was sunny, it was quite cold in the wind. I had recently taken up Geocaching and so it was time to introduce Anita to the game with cache in Romsey titled "A lone on the plateau". After finding the answer to the clues on the War Memorial at one end of town, we were sent to the other end to hunt the for the cache secreted near Romsey's Lone Pine reputedly grown from a seed from the original Lone Pine of World War I. Being taken to interesting locations where you wouldn't normally stop is half the fun of Geocaching...
After finding the cache, it was back into the warmth of the car and up the road to Lancefield. We stopped here more lunch but until I had unsuccessfully tried for another couple of caches. I am still learning some to the tricks and techniques so I am not always successful at the moment - getting dive-bombed by a Magpie doesn't help the concentration either. After our pleasant lunch in the Aspire Cafe (or The Aspy as the owners had nicknamed it), we headed north out of Lancefield a short way on the Tooboorac road before heading across country to Pyalong.
The Pyalong road was a beaut little road that rolled along and around the granite boulders that litter the area. At Pyalong we joined the Northern Highway for just long enough to cross Mollison Creek and then we left it again to head back to the Tooboorac road. Another glorious run across country brought us out at Painted Rock where there just happened to be another cache to find. You just have to believe when I say that I chose the route from the book without any thought of caching and it was just coincidence that these caches were so convenient...
From Painted Rock, it was off north again to Tooboorac. On the way we took a few hundred metre detour to find a cache in lovely surroundings at Fitz's Bridge.
After finding the cache, it was back into the warmth of the car and up the road to Lancefield. We stopped here more lunch but until I had unsuccessfully tried for another couple of caches. I am still learning some to the tricks and techniques so I am not always successful at the moment - getting dive-bombed by a Magpie doesn't help the concentration either. After our pleasant lunch in the Aspire Cafe (or The Aspy as the owners had nicknamed it), we headed north out of Lancefield a short way on the Tooboorac road before heading across country to Pyalong.
The Pyalong road was a beaut little road that rolled along and around the granite boulders that litter the area. At Pyalong we joined the Northern Highway for just long enough to cross Mollison Creek and then we left it again to head back to the Tooboorac road. Another glorious run across country brought us out at Painted Rock where there just happened to be another cache to find. You just have to believe when I say that I chose the route from the book without any thought of caching and it was just coincidence that these caches were so convenient...
From Painted Rock, it was off north again to Tooboorac. On the way we took a few hundred metre detour to find a cache in lovely surroundings at Fitz's Bridge.
Looking upstream from Fitz's Bridge
Looking downstream
At Tooboorac we turned right onto the Northern Highway and headed off to Pyalong. Having realised too late the township of Tooboorac would have been to our left, we went into Pyalong to see if we could find some afternoon tea. There is not much to Pyalong and we didn't find anything of interest. So we left Pyalong on the Seymour road, taking the opportunity to grab a cache at the Pyalong Trestle Bridge. This is an old timber trestle bridge that is heritage listed and in very poor condition - so bad that the road underneath is closed to cars and pedestrians. I suppose one day the government is going to waste a fortune of community money in restoring it so it can just stand there and rot away again. Don't get me wrong. I am all for keeping representative examples of our heritage but I also believe that what we keep has to be meaningful.
The Seymour road was another nice quite road to cruise along. At Glenaroua we turned off onto the Broadford road, grabbing our last cache for the day outside the CFA station. A delightful cruise to Broadford and on to Wandong brought us to the end of the run in the book. The run notes suggested lunch in the hotel which would have been feasible if we had (a) started earlier and (b) not gone cache hunting on the way. For us, it was straight on through Wandong, left at Wallan East across to Whittlesea and on home through Diamond Creek. The weather hadn't been quite as good as we hoped but still it was a nice day out.
