Vicky Rowe’s latest report covers the Early Morning Run to Bindoon via Toodyay this past weekend on Sunday, October 16th.
By Vicky Rowe
Hip hip hooray! Spring has arrived! It was a glorious morning and we were all in great spirits, looking forward to enjoying a drive in the country in the sunshine (finally!). 10 assorted Loti with 18 smiling faces smiled even more broadly when we announced that we were heading to some of our favourite roads around Toodyay. Greg in his Marcos, from last week’s fibreglassics run, decided to join us again, so that finished off a perfectly colourful procession as we left Guildford.
Very few of our runs are ever perfect. There’s usually missed turns, dead ends, unexpected dirt roads or some kind of mishap. It’s no big deal. In fact, it’s all part of the fun. But I gotta say, this run seemed to be as close as ‘we’ can get. It’s the sort of drive where the great roads just kept coming.
Eddie threw in some old favourites, such as Brigadoon. Whenever we visit this area I think it has been built just for us. I guess that eventually the area will be bustling with some lucky residents, but we seem privileged to have the place to ourselves to enjoy the beautiful roads and spectacular views, including the ‘slow points’.
To our surprise we managed to fit all our cars into the little carpark alongside the well-sculptured park in Brigadoon, providing a beautiful backdrop and opportunity for a photo stop. Perfectly positioned, we chatted and admired, oh and of course, took plenty of pics. We didn’t have a lot of time to waste, though, as we still had over 100km to go!
Just down the road we reached the all-time favourite part of Lancewood Avenue. A Double Roller Coaster road would be a more apt name for this section and what a wowser of a roller coaster it is. Greg in the Marcos later described his despair when the road appeared to drop out from beneath him, at the top of the crest. And apparently Les has a photo of me climbing the first incline and it looks like I’m on a vertical wall of road. It doesn’t matter what car you’re in this road is perfect joy!
Onto another favourite, we saluted Brocky’s monument as we flew down O’Brien’s road. Then navigated a series of Targa roads around Toodyay. Funny name this place, but most of us car folk know the area well. The town itself isn’t that special, but the earth upon which this sits certainly is, especially on a sunny spring day after months of rain. It was the perfect day to enjoy the countryside of green rolling hills and trees, rocky outcrops, and wildflower carpet of mauve and yellow.
Agreeing to sit at the tail of the group, Jen (with Mark in the Espirit) had the walkie talkie. We were able to keep in contact and keep track of what was going on back there. A couple of times though we lost track of a few cars. Apparently, our epic drive was testing the bladders of a few in the group. I too was feeling a bit hollow, so we headed towards our final destination, the Bindoon Bakehaus and Cafe.
Coming from the north, we had a new road to explore and over 30km to travel. Well, what a surprise. It’s not often to find a twisty, narrow and challenging road that is signposted 110km/hr. I think that might be unique to Perth. I’m not sure there are any roads over 100km/hr on the east coast, are there? It seemed like the perfect road to finish our near perfect Early Morning Run.
We turned onto the highway (100km/hr) and arrived at the very busy Bakehaus. This is a favourite for car clubs and motorbike groups and today was no exception. In fact, we were joined by the Cobra car club and then the Bentley owners car club, including about four real old girls from the 1920s and 30s. Each of these cars has an exceptional history and many are still used in events all around the world.
While admiring these machines we realised one was a 1930 Van Den Plas owned by the Runcimans, parents of Evora owner Doug. This particular car was a West Australian Police car from 1930 to 1947. Jim and Glenys are very active members of the Bentley owners car club organising lots of drives and events. Today was the start of a week long trip heading out to Esperence via Albany. No doubt their trip would be a slower pace than our usual drives, but it doesn’t matter what the pace or in which vehicle, car people just love to be out in their cars on the roads. Sounds perfect to me!
Images by, and thanks to, Vicky and Eddie Lankhorst
