Sun, Scenery, and Local Flavours on the September MidWeek Run

Flora, Roman goddess of flowers and Spring, might as well be thanked for blessing the Mid Week Runners with the most perfect day for our September outing. The Vernal Equinox was cloudless, calm, and warm, and we certainly made the most of it.

Our first stop was the Spring Hill Nursery at Tylden, where coffee, cakes, and chat were enjoyed in the sunshine. While sections of the garden were ablaze with Spring colour, the car park was equally remarkable. Unlike most contemporary car parks and dealerships with their rows of monochrome blobs, ours was a riot of colour. The 15 club cars from earlier eras proved there was once a time when buyers weren't scared of bold, pretty shades. They visually popped in the bright sun.

Once morning coffee was finished and seedlings and horticultural treasures were loaded up, we took off towards Daylesford in a cruising convoy. Humming along the road with the roof off and dappled light filtering through the trees, your reporter followed a gliding Stingray, with a cantering Stag in the rear-view mirror. Petrolhead bliss-apart from a few potholes!

We diverted to Istra Smallgoods in Musk, just before Daylesford. Down the end of a dark tunnel driveway of cypresses sits a modest retail shopfront, part of a much larger processing and wholesale enterprise. (The region of Istria sits at the north-eastern end of the Adriatic Sea, mostly now part of Croatia, but including the Italian city of Trieste). The skills of northern Italian and Balkan traditional meat processing were presented to us on a fantastic tasting platter, and sales were brisk. Your reporter came away with a big pot of Ajvar-the paprika-flavoured relish made from capsicums and eggplant to which a Serbian friend introduced me years ago. A generous slathering of this stuff improves every barbecue! Istrian sausages were also bought, and both were combined the next day. Yum.

Again, boot lids clicked open, bounty was stowed, and away we went to Rubens in Hepburn Springs. Here, 28 of us sat down at a very long table for Italian-influenced cuisine. The floor staff served us with such efficiency, verve, and good humour that they earned a well-deserved round of applause.

Our thanks go to Linda and Brian Annison for organising a delightful run, and also, of course, to Flora.