Blue Mountains again and Sydney

Location: Sydney Library
Weather: Sunny

Left Orange and got the bus to Lithgow. I've visited Lithgow before with my friend Ben and there wasn't much there, EXCEPT the famous Zig Zag railway, which I missed last time, so I went on the Vintage Railcar ride and tour and then took the train to Katoomba. It was raining and cold, but I decided to gamble on the weather and stay in Katoomba at the excellent YHA for the night. Waking up late, due to reading some Sherlock Holmes book I found in the hostel, I looked out the window and it turned out to be quite a nice day. So leaving around 11:30am, I walked the 2kms odd to the Golden Staircase and began the walk to the 'Ruined Castle' around 1pm. The Ruined Castle is a rock formation in the middle of a huge forest and you have to walk through the forest, then scramble and rock-climb to get to the top. The view was spectacular. Well worth it. There was literally nobody about, except a few crows and magpies. More scrambling and clambering was needed to get past a landslide area on the way back. This whole walk is supposed to take 5-6 hours - 8km, but I completed the whole thing in about 3 hours, must admit I was really powering it along though. Just made it in time to catch the near-vertical train which runs back up the mountain, saving me the bother of about 5000 stairs. Then I walked to Echo Point to see how far I'd been. I was very surprised! The Ruined Castle was a lot further away than I expected. Got back to the hostel around 6pm then caught the 8pm train to Sydney, around 10:30pm I met up with my old roommate Sasa and went for a couple of beers. Not a bad day.

By JamesReed on 02.09.04 @ 08:00 AM GMT