A weekend in the Blue Mountains: the no rush itinerary

The classic Blue Mountains mistake is trying to see everything. Twenty lookouts, three towns, a bushwalk, and high tea, all in two days, most of it spent parking. This itinerary does less on purpose: one proper walk, two towns, one long dinner, and enough slack to stop when something looks good.

It assumes you are coming from Sydney and basing yourself in Katoomba or Leura, which sit five minutes apart. Both have plenty of accommodation, and both work car free thanks to the train.

Friday night: get up the hill

Leave before the traffic or take the train after dinner. If you arrive with energy, walk to the Carrington Hotel in Katoomba: it has been serving drinks under the same chandeliers since 1883, and a quiet Friday beer in the old bar is the right way to switch modes from city to mountains.

Saturday morning: the cliffs before the buses

Echo Point is genuinely worth it, and genuinely mobbed from mid morning. Solve this by arriving before 9am. You get the Three Sisters in low light, room to breathe, and free street parking that will not exist an hour later.

From the lookout, skip the car shuffle and walk the Prince Henry Cliff Walk east toward Leura. It is the best value track in the mountains: constant views, barely any climbing, and it hands you to Leura Cascades in about an hour. Turn around whenever you like, no summit required.

Saturday afternoon: Leura, slowly

Leura Mall is made for an unhurried afternoon. Megalong Books is one of the best regional bookshops in the state, the kind of place where you buy a novel you did not plan to. Lunch at Leura Garage if you want noise and woodfired everything, or grab a pie and sit in the park with the cockatoos.

If you have kids or the weather turns, this is the Scenic World slot. Otherwise, drive or bus out to Lincoln's Rock at Wentworth Falls late in the day: a wide flat slab of clifftop with sunset views and none of the fences.

Sunday: Blackheath and the big valley

Have breakfast in Katoomba, check out, and drive or train the ten minutes to Blackheath. Govetts Leap lookout is the equal of anything at Echo Point with a fraction of the crowd, and the short walk along the clifftop to Pulpit Rock keeps giving you new angles on the Grose Valley.

Pick up lunch from the Bakehouse on Wentworth in Blackheath before you head down. If you have a car and daylight left, drop into Megalong Valley on the old road: in twenty minutes you go from clifftop to farmland at the bottom of the walls you were just standing on, and it feels like a different state.

When to come

Winter is the local secret: cold clear air, sharp views, and open fires in every pub. Autumn brings the leaf colour and the mist. Spring is for Leura's gardens. Summer works, but the mountains are at their least distinct from Sydney then, and the best walking hours end by ten.