Over the last few weekends we have done a couple of local walks which have been something of a revelation – because they are so close and easy to get to!
The first one is from the Nepean Lookout in the Blue Mountains National Park, the Glenbrook entrance to which is only a few hundred metres from our house. Admittedly the Nepean Lookout is half-an-house cycle ride into the Park (I’ve done it before, of course. We drove this time.)
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We walked from the Nepean Lookout down to Erskine Creek. This is a tributary of the main river, and a beautiful spot. According to the signs, yabbies (small freshwater crayfish) and even platypus can be seen there [very occasionally, I suspect]. It was a truly lovely walk.
Then two weekends ago we did this walk. This was even easier to get to: we simply caught the train two stops up the mountain from Glenbrook Station (200m from our front door!). So we caught the train up to Winmalee Station and walked into the bush from there. We walked down the Florabella Pass for a couple of hours, through some lovely bushland, and ended up in Blaxland.
The walk involved a bit of up and down, but overall descent: the guidebook says the walk involves 330m descent and 280m climbing. It’s a little steep in parts, but really not too bad, and could be done in almost any conditions – it has been very dry recently, but even if we had a lot of rain, Florabella Creek is unlikely to make the walk impassable.
In many ways it’s the best ideologically sound day out – train two stops (to give you an idea, it is about as far as two stops on the London Underground). Then a simple route through a truly lovely valley, and end up at home!
There were some very interesting features to be seen on the walk, and see beautiful areas, like this pool in the forest.
There were also some examples of what I think are Bloodwood Trees