When Gabby told me that she booked us a "dirty weekend away" - I immediately thought - "Alright! I love mountain biking!".
Turns out I was right, you know you've got it made when your wife researches, books and funds a mountain biking getaway as a Christmas gift!
The first night we spent at Wiseman's Ferry, not so much for the riding in the area, but more as an interesting location to check out and use as a half way house for the trip.
We spent the night sampling the local brews, something called Carlton Draught, and invading the local duck enclosure.
Next morning it was onto the Blue Mountains where we promptly checked into our room and headed down to the Megalong Valley, to revisit one of the best sections of the Six Foot Track which we rode last year.
This particular section is all singletrack descending and climbing out of Coxs River - a really amazing piece of trail with plenty of interesting rocky sections and stairs to keep you constantly stimulated. Being 35 degrees Celsius, the swim in the Coxs river at the bottom was particularly revitalising.
Next day we hit an XC race track at Rydall, just outside of Lithgow. It was a very different experience to the previous day, but certainly worth the effort. With about 10 Ks of winding, rocky singletrack I was in heaven. The Epic loves these type of trails where you throw a lot of weight over the
front, tip 'er in and just keep pedalling.
That night saw Gab vastly improving her skills in the sport of darts, from not hitting the board at all, to beating me fair and square (I was an all-state darts champion as a lad). We also played the game where if you drink a beer, you have to drink a beer. Everybody wins.
After a sizeable English breakfast and a couple of long blacks, we decided to go and check out a place called the Glow worm Tunnel located in a National Park about 45 Kms North - East of Lithgow (the exact middle of nowhere) . It certainly lived up to it's name as it was indeed a tunnel that contained glow worms.
It was a pretty cool experience being totally out in the middle of nowhere though, we didn't see another person for that entire adventure. The tunnel itself was about 300 metres long and pitch black for the most part of that, save for these little disco worms hanging from the ceiling. For some reason the over whelming excitement that is glow worm gazing wasn't enough for me though so I decided to complete the 10 Km climb out of the National Park to blow out the cobwebs a little. Sounds pretty sadistic, but it was one of the nicer climbs I've ever done with stunning scenery around every bend.
After all this beautiful scenery, togetherness, exercise and unbridled enthusiasm it was certainly time for a dose of reality - a flat tyre on Pennant Hills Rd was just the right medicine for that!
Thanks to Gabby for a great weekend and remember to get out of Glenrock every now and then!