After a month of relentless rain, we finally had a sunny day for the May 2022 Night Drive. This drive was a shorter one, The Spit to Palm Beach. We had previously done a Palm Beach drive in October 2020, so we took a different route. On the previous drive, we started at Manly and hugged the coast until we reached Palm Beach. This time we started at the Spit, and took Wakehurst Parkway, bypassing the traffic lights and built up sections.
Wakehurst Parkway is a winding road through areas of bushland that are quite close to the city. Certainly it doesn’t feel like you’re only 10km from the CDB at the start. The northern section exits at Narrabeen lagoon. It was only a few months ago that the lagoon broke its banks and this whole area was underwater.
After some last minute cancellations, we had six cars arrive for the drive. Like last time, it was heavily weighted towards the classics. I took my 560SEC. It was a nice night to drive with the windows down, but heater and heated seats on.
As well as my SEC, we also had two veterans of my recent Adelaide trip – A W123 280CE and a 380SEC. The short drive up to palm beach was insignificant compared to the 4,000km drive across the country. As well as these two, we had a very nice A124 E320, and two cars that looked like they had just been photographed for a brochure. A pristine W126 280SE and a W202 C200 with only 60,000km on the clock.
We proceeded up the drive with a quick pit stop at a service station for a drink. It was quite a good sight having all these classic Mercedes lined up at a small Narrabeen service station. The Wakehurst parkway routing meant that it was pretty easy to keep the group together, and only six cars helped as well.
Palm beach itself was very peaceful at night, only disturbed by the very regular buses terminating at the beach. Given they all arrived empty, the route seems somewhat over-serviced. I’m not sure the locals would agree!
On the way back, we took Mona Vale road, past the Bahai temple. The temple always looks very impressive at night, the way it is lit up against the dark background of the sky. With the small group and easy route, the May 2022 Night drive was a very relaxed drive.
[…] done a couple of drives to Palm Beach that use some of these roads, but this route was a new one. I think it worked quite well and […]