Parkes, NSW July 7 2023

 

Parkes, NSW July 7 2023

Finally we were able to tear ourselves away from Canberra and home, heading north again, seeking some warmer weather.

This time we were heading to Parkes for our first night, a run of about 300km. We stopped at Boorowa for a break, but the cafe that we had ‘discovered’ a few years back on a BMW run, was unfriendly, cold and had nothing to eat that took our fancy. We wandered back up the road, stuck our heads into a cafe we didn’t recognise that only sold pizza, and ended up back at the bakery. We were only going to get a take-away coffee but succumbed, yet again, to the temptations of a rock-cake.

A pleasant enough run up to Cowra, then left and right to continue following the Lachlan Way toward Forbes. We pulled up at Goolagong, a tiny town at the junction of the road that goes either to Forbes or Orange, and made ourselves a sandwich in the van. It did occur to us that it was now colder than Canberra and starting to rain.

After lunch we pushed on to Forbes. It must be noted that the roads are in a bit of a mess due to the recent floods, so a slower trip weaving around potholes was the order of the day. I stopped just after crossing the Lachlan on the Iron Bridge (1892) to take a picture of the other side of the history sign, that I failed to take back in 2019 when we were last here.

We had thought the road a bit of a mess, but heading north out of Forbes on the Newell Highway we came across big road works, single lanes and traffic lights. We arrived in Parkes at about 3, parked up on the all-tarred terrace and nipped into town to get-a-few-things.

We are both a bit tired after our first day on the road and so the rest of the day was spent quietly n the van.

South Forbes, NSW

South Forbes, NSW