Side Trip to Hawkesbury

Got down to renting a car and doing a 2 night driving trip to the greater sydney area.

23 Nov 2010 - From Sydney via the small towns alongs the Old Northern Road (Dural, Glenorie, Maroota ...) via the ferry crossings at Wisemans Ferry to the quiet historic of St Albans. The scenic drive along the Macdonald river. After 2 more river crossings at Webb Creeks and Sackville crossing, arrving at Tizzana Winery B&B for a wonderful stay, dinner and wine :>

24 Nov 2010 - On to Mt Tomah Botanic garden via the Bells line of road, then driving on to visit Grose valley and then overnight stay in blackheath motor Inn.

25 Nov 2010 - Quick drive to Evan's Lookout and then to the secluded Megalong Valley Tea room.
Visit to Leura cascade, then lunch in leura and one last lookout at gordon's falls and we are on our way back to sydney.

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Wisemen Ferry and St Albans

A great 2 day side trip ... driving from Sydney via Old Northern Highway to St Albans, along the Bells line of roads to the Blue mountains national park.
- stopping at Durval for breakfast
- picking up pies at the famous Gelornaire bakery
- quick stop at the Tubork merino farm
- ferry crossings with the car at Wisemen Ferry
- visiting the seculded and historic St Albans

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Tizzana Bed and Breakfast

A small boutique winery. We stayed at their B&B which truely deserves the 5* that they were awarded.
The B&B was a sandstone house connected to the Winery/ Cellar Door itself. It was midweek, being the only folks in the B&B that day, with a view of the vineyards and the hawkesbury river right out of the window, it was absolute tranquility.

After a walk in their vineyard and olive tree plantation,dinner was Cote Au Vin (white wine version) with warm chocolate cake as desert. Dinner also cames with the 2007 Clarrissa , which was a more "old world" style of wine ... blend of cab sav, petit verdot and shiraz ... nice. After dinner, Peter was kind enough to open the cellar door for us to visit and taste the rest of the range of Tizzana wines.

Breakfast was massive ... a big platter of fruits, juices, crossiants, fruit loaf and followed by cooked hot breakfast of bagdhad eggs and potato cakes with cooked pear ...

Time to leave the sound of birds and the view ...

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Mt Tomah Botanic Garden

The cool climate botanic gardens of the Royal Botanic Gardens of Sydney ...

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Blackheath

We lost count of the no of "lookouts" and valleys and ridges that we visited in this sydney trip.

However, my favourite 2 are nearest to Blackheath ... Hangraves Lookout (on Shipley Plateau) and Govetts Leap
Flora and fuana were very interesting ... wild terrestial orchids, sundew (insert eating plants), Crested white parrots, Wattle bird ... etc

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Megalong Valley

Enough of view from the top ... we decided to take a drive down to Megalong Valley and to the Teahouse for their famous Devonshine Tea. Too bad we already had breakfast, their scones and apple pie made from the local orchard sounded good.

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Leura

An easy hike to the Leura Cascade, followed by lunch in the flower garden town of Leura at Cafe Bon Ton.Arrgh .. their duck pie was sold out!!

The flower pot scones from Wayzgoose cafe ... one of the best scones we had tasted.

Sydney city traffic was terrible. Was forced into a wrong turn due to heavy traffic and a not-too-brillant GPS. Got stuck in city traffic and took a forced tour of their city tunnels and testing out their toll system .
Took me more than 1 hour to get from our place to the car rental company which was less that 5km away.

We were about 5-10 mins late in reaching the rental company which closed at 18:30. Good thing the guys at the were kind enough to allow us to return the car after the closing time. Kudos to baywaters rental company for excellent customer service and very no-fuss car rental.

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