Visiting the Blue Mountains

We woke on Friday morning to heavy rain and low temperatures - it certainly
didn't encourage us to go out and we were so pleased that we weren't in the
tent (in fact we wouldn't be, we would have booked into a motel). We spent
the morning at the house and in the afternoon we went into the city for
another appointment for Peter.

Before leaving the house I telephoned the information centre at Katoomba as
we planned to visit the Blue Mountains on Saturday. The guy provided me the
information but then said to call before visiting as the Western Highway to
Katoomba was currently closed due to the heaviest snow in thirty years. The
news that night showed the area covered in snow and the road and trains had
been closed for hours.

We took the train from Blacktown to North Sydney - fortunately this is on
the same line so we didn't need to change trains. It is so much quicker to
catch the train than take the car and so much cheaper - as seniors we can
catch public transport for a full day for $2.50 each. The train station at
North Sydney is in the middle of a large shopping centre so while Peter
headed off with umbrella in the heavy rain to his appointment I stayed in
the comfort of the shopping centre. As there was no let up in the rain we
couldn't be bothered wandering anywhere else so after Peter's appointment we
headed back to Blacktown.

Fortunately the weather improved overnight and Saturday morning there was
blue sky and warmer temperatures. We decided to have our trip to the Blue
Mountains, hopeful that we would see some evidence of the snow.
Unfortunately for the sake of our photos the snow was all gone.

Our first stop was at Wentworth Falls - there were quite a few visitors
about. It was fine but the temperatures were still quite low. We initially
went to look at the Blue Mountains from the Jamison Lookout - the blue hue
was quite evident.

From the lookout we walked down one of the stepped tracks to get a view of
the Wentworth Falls from across the valley. It is possible to walk to the
bottom of the falls but the 1-2 hour walk didn't appeal to me today as it
would have been our luck for the rain to start again and the tracks were
quite slippery as they were following the heavy rain. We could see a number
of people walking the track in the distance but we didn't join them.