18 August 2011

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We woke up to glorious sunshine. At about 7.45am Tux and I caught a taxi from the local taxi rank to go and pick up the hire car, which was located by Hyde Park on the other side of the bridge! The chap at the hire company was a Brit who had originally come over in 2005 as a backpacker, gone home for a year and then come back out. He was an avid Crystal Palace supporter!

We managed to drive the car back over the bridge to the house and picked up the others and headed off to the Blue Mountains. It was 70 miles to Katoomba and once we had got out of Sydney on pretty good motorways we started to climb, eventually up to 1000m. Before arriving in Katoomba we stopped off at Wentworth Falls and some spectacular views. To get the best views of the waterfall we had to walk down a fairly steep and stepped path, which was rather wet from yesterday’s rain. Not all had footwear for these conditions!

We travelled on to Katoomba where we initially went to the lookout nearest to the 3 Sisters, which are 3 rocky outcrops. Although sunny it was very windy at the look out.

We then moved on to Skyway where after a lot of discussion we decided to buy a combined ticket that covered a number of attractions, even though I wasn’t sure I was personally going on some of them. We started off with a 2 way trip on Skyway. This is like a large cable car but travels level across a ravene to give excellent views of the valley and a waterfall. I got on but didn’t like it so got off before it left. However I was persuaded by the staff to get back on and sit down rather than stand up. I handed the camera over to Tux to take photos and we managed to get through it!

Then on to the SkyTrain which they said was the steepest railway in the world. It was like getting into a cage but it wasn’t too steep. However as soon as it started off it went very steep and fast and you really had to brace yourself from falling onto the person in front – there were no seat belts! The railway followed the path of a similar railway line down to a mine around 100 years ago.

Now down in the bottom of the valley there was a nice but cold boarded walk through the forests to a cable car to return to the top.

It was then time for a traditional Aussie pie for lunch before driving on to Govetts Leap and another spectacular lookout and waterfall. We then made a decision not to return the car by 6pm that day, but to instead take it back early the next morning. As we started the trip back to Sydney we stopped off at the picturesque village of Leura, where we had a cup of tea and cake, before buying out the local supermarket for cooking a supper at the house when we got back.

It took about 2 hours to get and the traffic got increasingly heavy as we got nearer to Sydney. The Sat Nav had served us very well all holiday but at a critical moment, probably brought on by the number of tunnels it made a bad mistake and we ended up going in the tunnel under Sydney harbour and then had to spend another 40 minutes coming back over the bridge.

Stephanie cooked supper, while Tux and Neil went out for a run and Samantha and Eryl laid the table. Having done the drive home I sat down and opened a cider and fell asleep. I fell asleep again after supper and some red wine and went to bed around 9.30am

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