Blog 9; Blue Mountain spam (not a local delicacy!)

Quite a short blog tonight as we have not had so many mis-adventures today.

Let’s start with clearing something up – the Scottish bagpipe music at breakfast yesterday was not a fluke – we had the same today. I love the pipes as much as the next man, but starting your day with a mournful wail is not the way to do things…

We took off for the Blue Mountains today – it is a vast area, and there is so much to see that we could only see a tiny bit of it. We sat down and picked all of the places we would like to see, and then plotted them on the map – the journey alone would have been 9 hours 😊 We narrowed it down to the top 3 and decided if we saw any more it was a bonus.

Driving in Sydney is REALLY tricky. There is little to no warning before you have to turn, and if you miss one turning, you have added an hour onto the journey (yep, personal experience) even if you get on the highway, you will be tootling along in the left lane (signs everywhere say ‘keep left unless overtaking’ but then all of a sudden, the left lane stops and you have to zip into the middle lane – absolute bloody madness. And, I know this is a generalisation, but the truckers are bulleys! I try and stick to the speed limit, but they force you to go faster – and if you don’t, they pip at you, and their ‘pip’ is a bloody loud horn! The lanes are very narrow too, so you really have to concentrate.

First stop was Govetts Leap Lookout, (what3words; Jesters.across.faiths) which was billed as the most photographed vista in Oz.

I am not even going to try and describe the view, there are just not enough superlatives for it, and these pics definitely do not convey the scale – for example, the falls in the right of this pic are the Bridal Veil Falls and they are 180m (590ft) tall.

We stopped for lunch in a little town called Blackheath at the Victory Café (what3words; Jesters.across.faiths) which was a café and antiques centre combined. The owner was of UK parents and was excited to point out that Branston Pickle came with a toastie (so how could I order anything else) and Em had the Ozzie staple of smashed avocado and pea on toast with a poached egg. There was certainly a quirk to the place, proper small town service where the owner knew all of the locals, and anyone she did not know was a tourist and she certainly knew them by the time they left.

All of the cafés used the same public rest rooms, but they were pretty cool, and the decoration was very colourful, as was the wall to the car park

I know I keep harping on about how a little behind the times Oz is, but when was the last time you saw a sign for Ladies Wear and Gift Lines?

After lunch we sought out the famous 3 Sisters (what3words;flutes.practically.bound) – they were impressive, that is for sure, but so was the background vista – how many words for vast can you think of? Still not enough!

Child for scale 😊

This video may help….

We finished off at the Wentworth Falls, which sadly I only seem to have one picture of and it is rubbish! This is only the top of the falls, they do drop dramatically after this point.

– by this time the sun was going down, and let me tell you, once the sun is gone you know it is winter here!

As we left the Blue Mountains, I am left wondering why they have such an issue with toilets - this is the second such sign in two days.....

We ate dinner at the Sienna Marina, which is an Italian place close to our hotel (what3words; cotton,input.lowest) and then back to our hotel for me to write this and Em to put her 4 hours in at work.

We leave Sydney tomorrow to head a little further south so we can tick another big thing off the bucket list (Emily’s list this time), so fingers crossed!