The Blumberg Hotel

Birdwood was called Blumberg for the first eighty years of its life, and its grand old pub is where that history lives on. First opened in 1856 as the Napoleon Bonaparte Inn, the hotel served the Prussian settlers and miners of the young town through the nineteenth century, weathered the town's wartime renaming to Birdwood in 1917, and in 1973 formally took back the old name — the Blumberg Hotel.

Today it is one of the most photographed pubs in the Hills, its long stone frontage and verandah dominating the main street. Inside it does exactly what a country pub should: a menu of well-made classics built on local produce, a good line-up of Hills beers and wines, and front-bar conversation that has been running, more or less continuously, since the gold-dray days. The al fresco tables along the front and the beer garden out back are the spots to be on a sunny afternoon.

It is the natural lunch stop after a morning at the National Motor Museum, and the end-of-ride reward now that the Amy Gillett Bikeway runs all the way to Birdwood's main street.