The Blue Mountains

We packed up in light rain and moved inland to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. Not so blue to day though as it is a typical English summers day - grey sky and low cloud with light rain. We walked to the famous Echo falls lookout along the Prince Henry cliff walk and could see nothing but cloud. We are pleased we are booked in for 4 nights and the skies are lifting tomorrow. We woke to a much better day weather wise. Still cloudy, but the mist and drizzle had disappeared. We drove to Blackheath, also in the Blue Mountains National Park. We walked around the small town, taking in the array of interesting shops. Then we drove onto a small place called Hartley, where we visited an old courthouse (built and used in the 1800s). An interesting museum with tales of law breakers who had been tried there all those years ago. The holding cells in which they were held before being tried were pretty grim. Then back to Blackheath to 2 different viewing points and to do some walking in the mountains. The first spot we visited, Govetts Leap lookout, had evidence of many very badly burnt trees. The visitor centre was closed for over a week when the fires raged - it was very close to damaged forest area. It felt quite spooky walking along the tracks with trees either side of us burnt out and no sound from birds. Thankfully already there are signs of new growth in the trees and plants there - but who knows how long it will be before the animal life returns. The Blue Mountains are certainly stunning to look at - even after raging fires followed by floods. We then made our way to Evans Lookout, where we walked the Grand Canyon trail. A stunning walk, again partly through fire damaged trees. We walked down and down and down through beautiful greenery until we reached the creek at the bottom. As there has been so much rain recently the waterfalls were in full flow, and we got quite wet at times, as the water splashed off the paths we were walking along. The walk back up comprised of over 1200 steps!!!! We felt we had had our daily exercise today once we returned to the car.Read more