Paradise Pizza Portland

28 April 2025 / Maree and Steve Eccleston

 We lead today’s run as Bob and Marnie were unable to do it due to house renovations.

This morning, the Sydney weather god decided after all that great sunshine over Easter we had, it’s time for some rain.  Well, we had torrential rain Saturday night and the radar map looked very ugly, so the, “we are not coming texts” started arriving early on Sunday morning. A great start!

Our meeting point was the Benzin Café Dural and by the allotted departure time we had only 8 cars and three of these advised us that, due to the rain, they would not continue on the run. So ten true believers, in five cars departed for the run to Paradise Pizza at Portland with a coffee stop at the Ebenezer Church. This was a big act of faith as the Café sits on the banks of the Hawkesbury River and has been flooded above the roof 3 times since 2020, mmm!

Our run to the Church was very pleasant with no traffic and no rain. Our spirits were further uplifted by the very warm welcome we received from the Church volunteers who were very glad to see our group even though smaller than expected.  Here we were  joined by 5 hardy mountain folk, Graham Fletcher, Garry Joss, Ron and Bridget from the “rain won’t stop us” RPM chapter. After a nice break we continued onto Paradise Pizza. The run was uneventful, no traffic, no rain and no hazards.

The café owners were also very pleased to see us and even though our numbers were significantly down as we were their first customers for the day. We spent a very relaxing few hours sharing great pizzas and stories overlooking the river while the rain stayed away and the afternoon continued to dry out. We also welcomed our new member Jonathan Wood.

While it didn’t start well, in the end it was a very enjoyable and mostly a dry run for all those waterproof members who attended.

Maree and Steve Eccleston