This evening was the monthly MBCNSW night drive. We finally completed a route we have wanted to do since March of 2021, on the third attempt. It was worth those attempts as it was a great drive.
We actually planned the route back in February 2021. To test out the route, we did an informal dry run with a few club members. We thought it was it was a pretty good route, so booked it for that March. Of course a few weeks later Sydney experienced freak ‘once in 100 year’ storms that flooded the route. Based on that, we re-booked it for June of 2021. In June, we got further, as we actually started the route. The route goes over a car ferry, which was closed for urgent maintenance. We had to quickly abandon the route and ended up driving up the Old Pacific Highway.
Since Sydney had another set of ‘once in 100 year’ storms earlier in the year, we did another dry run earlier in the month. The route was still good, so we kept the schedule and finally completed the drive. We even got lucky with the weather for a change – storms are predicted for tomorrow and the weekend, but it was a lovely evening for a drive.
Our drive was somewhat of a return to the 80’s with the cars in attendance. We had three W124’s, a W123 and my W126 560SEL. The W123 was a car I had not seen before, a 230E in striking yellow.
The route started in North Turramurra and proceeded north through Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. From there, we joined up with the old Pacific Highway for a while, before turning off to the Berowra waters Ferry. The drives through the National Park and down to the ferry were very narrow, winding roads with lots of switchbacks. It’s on roads like this that you notice driving a long wheelbase! On the other side of the ferry, it was through Arcadia, and ultimately to join the Old Northern Road.
We didn’t stay on the Old Northern Road very long, we quickly turned onto Cattai Ridge road towards Maraylya. Like most of this drive, it is a winding, semi rural road through quite a hilly part of Sydney. Once we reached Maraylya, we headed back towards Dural McDonalds via Pitt Town road. While for most of this drive, we were not that far from the city, none of the route took us through built up areas, so traffic was very light. It was easy to keep our convoy of five cars together.
As the crow flies, the ending point wasn’t actually that far from where we started, but it took us an hour and three quarters to do the route. I think this is one of the better routes we have done for the MBCNSW night drives and everyone who was there seemed to enjoy the route. It was worth three attempts and two dry runs!
I had no issues with my 560SEL, and the brakes were very responsive and the ride much improved after the recent work I had done to the car.
Next month, our route takes us south of Sydney. We try to vary the areas of the city we do the drives to give opportunities for people who live in different areas to attend.
[…] covered our route in more detail last year, but the nice thing about it is that there are only a couple of short sections where there is any […]