Wednesday April 21st 2021
This one night trip to Bowral was a birthday activity for Mark. We left Bondi at about 10.30am and made it to our first stop in Bowral which was Plantation Cafe. I’d seen photos of this cafe online and it looked so inviting that I thought it was a must visit place and it did not disappoint. The setting and food were equally impressive. The cafe is alongside a little lane that adjoins this amazingly huge antique destination called Dirty Jane’s. You could easily spend an hour or so wandering through and inspecting the vast array of trash and some treasure in this place. By then it was close enough to 2 pm and so we headed to our accommodation for the evening, and this was the rather grand Berida Hotel. I would offer people who were thinking of staying in this hotel one suggestion. And that is to book with the hotel directly and, when making your booking, ask for a room that has a lot of good natural light.
The Berida Manor building dates back to the 1920s and so some rooms have much better light than others. We were initially shown to a room that was rather dark but were able to change to a ‘corner room’ upstairs, on the other side of the building, that had more natural light with windows on two of it sides.
We weren’t in our room long though as Mark had mapped out a walk for us to take that afternoon the Box Vale Track. So off we set to find the track. We managed to find the track, despite the lack of appropriate signage, and took this walk for about an hour although, sadly, much of it was through rather slushy mud which did not impress me at all.
We made it back to the car in plenty of time to spare for a stop off at a brewery before heading back to the hotel. Beer drinking and beer tasting would have to be one of Mark’s favourite activities and so it was fortunate that there was a brewery on our way back to the hotel, Eden Brewery. Mark purchased a tasting paddle and quite enjoyed the beers and even bought some to take home. After that we headed back to our hotel and stopped off at the gin bar where we both tried a Gin and Tonic. This was a rather challenging activity as there were over 150 different types of Gin to choose from. The particular Gin that I tried, a Tasmanian McHenry Classic Dry Gin, was rather tasty and so we will be sourcing some of this once we get home. We had just the one Gin though as it was then time to head back to our room to get changed and ready for dinner. We had opted to dine at the hotel restaurant given that it was a cool evening and we weren’t really wanting to be walking very fast in the dark and cold.
The food at Bistro Social is French inspired and we both had the steak frites. There was a lovely ambiance in the restaurant and it was very well patronised, especially considering it was a Wednesday night. Our lovely young Italian waiter had kindly suggested a red wine that he liked and it turned out that we liked it too, so much so, that I have already ordered a dozen to be delivered to our home! The wine was a 2019 Sons of Eden Shiraz which was listed as $29 on the website but I sourced for $21. We were both rather tired after all the activity for the day and so retired to a room to for the night.
It was 2° Celcius for our morning walk the next day and so we had to hug the side of the street with the sun. Mark had noticed that there was a Cherry Tree Walk and he thought that might be rather pretty given the autumn timing and so that was our destination. It was about a 1 1/2 km walk from our hotel to the start of the Cherry Tree Walk so we only walked a little bit of the 5 km pathway before heading back towards our hotel with a stop off at the press cafe to have a coffee and banana bread. Our walk through the streets of Bowral was most interesting as some of the very grand sit on large estates. We walked down one street, Merrigang Street, and I would recommend seeking this street out for a stroll if you’re ever in the area and especially if you enjoy inspecting homes and real estate.
We checked out of the hotel at 10 am and made our way home via a stop off at Robertson, to view Belmore Falls and at Austinmer for lunch. This was a most beautiful drive through very lush and green pasture and farming land with some beautiful and well manicured homesteads. We also had our first drive along the coast road and off-shore Sea Cliff Bridge, near Colecliff, which is a most impressive journey and especially so on a beautiful sunny day, like it was for our trip.
It was around 2.30 pm by the time we arrived home and whilst we’d only been away for just over 24 hours, it seemed so much more as we’d fitted in quite a lot.
