Blue Mountains

With a 10 year wedding Anniversary we decided a nice little get away the the Blue mountains was a great way to celebrate. But with both of us with events coming up quickly we took the bikes for some riding over our 4 day break, but more about the rides later. It was a really nice weekend, we left on the Friday for the journey up and had accommodation booked at possums hideaway. This place was great wood fire, in an nice little tree house set a great mood. There were some nice little possums that came around to steal our banana's.
On Friday night we celebrated by going out for dinner at this nice Italian restaurant. It was great but I had a feeling someone was trying to tell us something with lots of concrete trucks going past. It was kind of funny by the end.
Saturday we went out with the tourists into Katoomba,had a little look around and found a great chocolate shop, very evil. They had great hot chocolate's. We felt we had to go bushwalking after that morning tea.
We did our best to try and relax, but with lots of riding and some little bush walks we found we did not really do enough. But we had a couple of rides in mind and wanted have a good go at them. We ended up doing the ridge road ride a few times, once during the day and once at night, we also did narrow neck, both great fun.



Ridgewell road to Baltzer lookout
This is a ride in Blackheath, all fire road but lots of fun. We parked just off the highway to make the most of the14k ride. This went down a nice smooth fire trail where we got lots of speed up, and it did not really take too long to end up at the car park for the walkers. From here after climbing over the fence we rode along the ridge over a fairly rough fire road it was great fun. There was plenty of short up hills with some nice little downs. We had a bit of rain but we did not care we were having lots of fun on this trail.
Before we knew it we were there at the lookout, The view was great, even better with the rain clouds.
On the way back I decided I would put in some good solid efforts so I left Kendra behind and headed to the car as hard as I could, so I could turn around and ride back to her hard. The hills were great and I loved fast pace on the smooth fire road back up to the car. Lots of fun, and then to come back and do it again with Kendra was twice as good.

Narrowneck
This ride is in Katoomba and about 20k's. But Kendra and I decided to make it a little longer by parking on a part of the fire trail and then ride up to the car park. Little did we know about the climb we had to get up there it was pretty steep but great fun on the way back. We were expecting a fairly flat ride.
The flat ride never really happened but we were faced with some good hills along the way. These hills really gave Kendra allot of confidence by the end, for both ascending and descending. There were some really great views and always something to look at along the way. This was a popular track with lots of riders, walkers and runners.
We were rewarded at the end of the track with another great view only to turn around and head back the way we came. We really did not expect it to take us as long as what to did and we were starting to get hungry towards the end. But it was a pretty quick trip back.
We were hoping to get back for a good lunch but did not really plan it too well as by the time we got back had a shower etc it was 3pm. That is the way it goes.

Really seeing the blue mountains is not just about the three sisters and all the touristy stuff we found the best bits are away from all that. Even better on the bikes as you can see so much in a short space of time and get to some really nice place's.
So a great anniversary with some really nice time together. One to remember.
Now I have to think back to the concrete trucks (bloody Adam and his jokes) and put in a good solid effort for my last 3 weeks of training before Easter. Yep, I had to pull a recovery week forward after I got a little bug at the beginning of last week. But good again and keen for some solid intervals.