True Blue

Blue Mountains. It's in the name for starters. I grew up in the Cairngorms, Gaelic for 'blue mountains' so I was always going to like Sydney's neighbouring range. You're not really aware of the Blues as mountains to be honest. I drive up a bit of an incline and I'm there. It's really a plateau, dissected into canyons and wide valleys by millennia of erosion.

I make a mistake on my first outing (I'm planning a few shortish walks for the day, to make the most of having the car and to see all the areas). I head down to look at Wentworth Falls, with just a small bag containing a bottle of water and a hat (or bonnet) that makes me look like something out of Jane Austen, and next thing I know I'm on a three to four hour trek. 


























































































Only, I'm not aware I'm on that long hike until I've gone down about 500 steps cut into a 
sheer cliff. By the time I realise, I decide I'd prefer to go on, than back up the Stairmaster from hell. It's all helped by a surprise round every corner – a flock of White Cockatoos, a waterfall I have to walk around the back of, sheer cliff-drop lookout points, little sculptures placed by the path, trackside posters showing how the path was cut into the side of the canyon, and some crazy folk abseiling down a waterfall (the only people I meet in the final two-hour stretch of the trail). 


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Finally I return to the clifftop from the depths of the gorge and there's the most sublime cafe – the Conservation Hut – with a terrace overlooking the Jameson Valley. I stagger in, like John Mills and his parched men arriving at a remote bar in the North African desert in the film Ice Cold In Alex. Ginger beer I rasp, and what's the quickest thing you can make me to eat? Well here it is, the sandwich of the century, followed by Jaffa Cake cake and ice cream. And lashings of ginger beer. 

 I've got time to whizz round a few more lookouts and even do a short walk or two – to the Three Sisters, and another canyon that is smaller and more compact than the one I walked and features the highest waterfall in Australia, Bridal Veil Falls. It's so quiet now as I gaze out from Evan's Lookout over the Grand Canyon. The gum trees give off a fine mist and the view turns blue before my eyes.