Sunday 13th August bloomed warm and sunny – the perfect day for the Club’s visit to the Alowyn Gardens & Nursery, just outside Yarra Glen.  The run was promoted as “an old fashioned Sunday drive with lots of time for coffee, lunch and good conversation” – the aim being to minimise the kilometres travelled while maximising the opportunity to better get to know fellow Club members.

After meeting at Hughes Park on the Maroondah Highway at North Croydon we quickly left urbanised Melbourne taking the back roads through Yering and joining the Melba Highway just south of Yarra Glen, arriving at the Alowyn Gardens & Nursery for morning coffee and cakes.  We lingered over our coffees and conversations, before embarking on exploration of the 7 acres of distinctive landscaped gardens, including; a Birch and Casuarina Forest, perennial borders, Native Garden, Edible Garden, French Provincial Garden and the 100 metre long Wisteria Arbour.

The gardens tranquil setting and the contrast of colour and landscaped form provided for chance meetings of our group along the pathways and, again, the chance to strike up conversation – for over 2 hours there was virtually no mention of Volvo cars and our respective “Volvo projects”!

As mid-day past we pondered whether to push on as planned to Kinglake and then to Healesville, but decided to go a few kilometres up the road for lunch at the Dixons Creek Café Bar & Grill – again a wonderful opportunity for Club members to chat before departing for home.

Participating on the day, were; Adrian Beavis & Imelda (240GLE), Werner Golla (740), Len Ward (144), Doug Miller (262C) and Robert Susanj & Steph in their very well presented white 240GL.  The consensus of our small group was that less drive time and more time spent at an interesting destination getting to know our fellow Club members was a great alternative to longer distance Club runs – the day revealed we had a lot of common interests in addition to our Volvos.