Hillbilly Cider Bilpin

18 January 2025 / Maree and Steve Eccleston

The day started well, only light rain was falling and we had an uneventful drive to our meeting point Macca’s at McGraths Hill. We arrived at 9.30 with loads of time to spare as the start time wasn’t until 10.30. So we took our time, we made/responded to several calls and Maree happened to look at the Club events page as she likes to check things. It was then that we discovered that we were starting from Macca’s Dural. Oh dear, a run organiser’s worst nightmare, and we couldn’t blame anyone, as we put the run up!

So we had a discussion and set the satnav for Dural and set off after ringing ahead and advising Andy to let everyone know we could be a little late. We duly arrived before the start time and were greeted with much hand clapping and backslapping. So no harm done. I advised everyone that due to our unfortunate start we would have to shorten the run as we were a lot further away from the original stating point as per our run sheets.  At this point Maree decided to change the run name to the Magical Mystery Tour which proved rather prophetic.

Well you know when things go wrong they can keep going wrong, and that’s what happened. Macca’s Dural is situated at a very busy round about and is hard to get out in one go. The short story is that we lost 3 cars at the start due to them not following clear and precise instructions, well at least they were very clear to me….

Everyone else fell into line and we followed Bob Lipa as he was several cars ahead of us in Macca’s carpark and he said he knew a good way to Windsor. We agreed that once we got to Windsor I would then lead on the original run route as the spreadsheets were still good and we could claim that we followed the run except that we started from the wrong place!

Well that didn’t happen either, as after Windsor we headed out to Richmond, not as per the run sheet, but hey, it was going in the right direction and we had an uneventful drive to our destination at Hill Billy Cider Bilpin and we arrived at the time we had originally booked. At least we got that right. The three recalcitrant drivers also turned up on time too which was nice.

We then had a welcome glass cider and a tasty pizza and everyone told us what a great run it was despite a few missteps along the way.  The run was very we attended with 24 members in 14 cars, including several first timers who must have thought, what organised chaos, but we got there in the end.

One thing we did get right were the awards. 10 year pins were presented to John and Jeanette Bramley. A thank you gift to Godwin and Gillian Camilleri as they were unable to attend our presentation lunch.