Things to Do in the Blue Mountains

Sorted by how long you have and what you feel like walking, rather than by what the place happens to hold. Find the paragraph that describes your day and the rest of this page is somebody else's problem. If walking is the point, Blue Mountains hiking tours are the ones to start with.

If you have three hours

You are already up here, or you have half a day between other things. Two options work at this length and neither is a compromise.

• Echo Point and the Three Sisters walk. Free, 0.8km return, graded easy, twenty-five to forty-five minutes, and it is the view everything else is measured against.
• An open-topped run on the fire trails. Three hours from Echo Point Road in an ex-army Land Rover, capped at eight travellers, on tracks a coach cannot use.
• Scenic World on its own. Ninety minutes to two hours for all four rides, from $64 an adult, and you can walk there from Katoomba station.

If you have one day

The standard shape, and the one almost every guided departure is built around. Ten to eleven hours door to door from Sydney, of which about four are driving. What you get for the other six or seven splits three ways: the attractions day, the walking day, or the late-start day that ends at sunset.

The attractions day fits Scenic World and a wildlife park around the lookouts. The walking day skips both on purpose and puts ninety minutes into the descent to Wentworth Falls. The late day leaves at ten or noon, misses the traffic, and finishes on a west-facing lookout in the last of the light.

If you have two days

Two days changes what is available rather than just how much of it you see. An overnight in Katoomba or Blackheath unlocks the three departures that start in the mountains, gives you a lookout at dawn when nothing else is moving, and removes four hours of driving from your total. It also makes Govetts Leap and the Grose Valley reasonable, which a single day from Sydney rarely does.

The accommodation page sets out where to base yourself and what each village is like.

If you would rather not walk far

Most of the famous views need no walking at all. Echo Point, Govetts Leap, Cahill's Lookout and Sublime Point are all a short step from a car park, and the Three Sisters walk is described by the National Parks and Wildlife Service as accessible with assistance as far as Oreades lookout. One of the coach days states plainly that it involves relaxed walks only and no hiking, which makes it the straightforward booking here.

If you are bringing children

The wildlife parks are the answer, and the minimum ages are the constraint. Featherdale and Sydney Zoo both sit on the western edge of Sydney rather than in the mountains, and several day tours fold one of them in; one lets you pick which. Minimum ages across the list run at five, six, twelve and fourteen, so the first thing to check is whether a day takes children at all rather than whether they will enjoy it.

If you want the mountains after dark

One thing runs after everything else has gone home: a ninety-minute stargazing session at the Wentworth Falls picnic area with a working astrophysicist, telescope and binoculars provided, hot chocolate and blankets included. Depending on the night it takes in craters on the Moon, the rings of Saturn, Jupiter's moons or the Orion Nebula. It is a final sale, so fix the date first.

The sunset departures are the other half of this. They leave Sydney at ten or noon and finish on a west-facing lookout, which is the one thing an early coach structurally cannot do.

If you are travelling alone

Almost everything here prices per person and takes a single booking without a supplement, so a solo day is straightforward rather than awkward. One private day tour is the exception, with a minimum of three adults. The group departures cap between four and thirty-five travellers, and reviewers on the smallest of them describe days that ended with the whole van eating together.

If the forecast is bad

Go anyway, or move the date — but decide the day before rather than on the morning. Tours run in rain and fog rather than cancelling, and no refund follows a poor view. What you do have is free cancellation up to twenty-four hours out on all but one departure. A wet day still gives you the rainforest, the waterfalls running hard and the wildlife parks, all of which are better in rain than a lookout is.

If you have already seen the Three Sisters

Go north. Govetts Leap at Blackheath faces the Grose Valley rather than the Jamison, and it is the emptiest of the major lookouts. The Megalong Valley, west between the two, is where the wild kangaroos are. Both sit on the small-group and private itineraries and on none of the fixed coach routes, which is the clearest practical difference between those two ways of buying a day.

What costs nothing

More than you would guess. There is no admission charge for the national park, and the only fee anywhere in it is $8 per vehicle per day in the Glenbrook area, on weekends, public holidays and school holidays. Every lookout named above is free, and so are the walking tracks, the villages and the views from them.

Choosing between them