We were picked up from our hotel by our tour guide John, who turned out to be from Devon. He drove us to the dodgily-titled Scenic World park for a fairly whistle-stop tour. This park is built around the site of an old mine, the entrance to which could still be seen.
As soon as we arrived, we bought tickets for the funicular railway which would take us down the hill and into the park. This turned out to be highly scary, as the train made a rapid and almost vertical descent while the Indiana Jones theme tune blared out on speakers.
We were promised that the Three Sisters would be visible when we reached the bottom. Sadly, this was not to be the case due to the thick fog and low cloud that day:
Having failed to see much of a view, we contented ourselves with a quick walk round the temperate rainforest in the park, reading the informative and educational plaques that told us about various examples of plant life and relics of mining activity that we passed.
One such plaque pointed out a dead tree that had been hit by lightning and which only continued to stand upright because it rested on another tree.
There were plenty of highly interesting geological rocks:
We took the cable car back up the mountain. This was significantly less scary than the train but the views were sadly no better.
We were slightly disappointed that the view of the Three Sisters had been obscured. Luckily, our tour went past them again later in the afternoon, on the way back from the caves, and the fog had cleared.
Hooray!
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