Sydney to Katoomba, Sunday 27 February.


Today was time to move on the Blue Mountains west of Sydney where I will stay 5 nights at the main mountain town of Katoomba.

By previous arrangement I left the bike box and some other bits and pieces at the B&B. Sydney spreads out a long way to the west and I decided to get a train to Penrith on the edge of the western suburbs.

I had noticed on my previous train trips that only some of the underground train stations had lifts. When I caught the train at Martins Place yesterday I took the bike down an escalator. This was fine unloaded but would not be so easy with Panniers. After catching the ferry to Circular Quay I rode about a mile through relatively quiet Sunday morning City Streets to Town Hall Station which has lifts.

After an hours train ride I got off at the western suburb of Penrith and had lunch there. To avoid a section of freeway I turned off the Great Western Road soon after Penrith on a side road to Baxland. This climbed over a ridge with very steep gradients of 12 to 15% and a maximum of 22% up to 790ft.

After turning back onto the Great Western Road the route continued to climb gadually to 3100ft at Katoomba. The road was a fairly busy duel carriageway but did have a hard shoulder. The day was cloudy and at about 2500ft I entered the cloud layer with a light drizzle, hence the dearth of pictures today.

Distance for the day was 30.7 miles with 3835ft of climbing and a ride time of 4hrs 9mins