Penrith and Yandhai Nepean Crossing

We didn't have any travel plans for the long Easter Weekend but wanted to get our steps in. Jo had been meaning to go to the Salvos Store in Minchinbury which isn't too far from Penrith, so we decided to make a trip out of it.

We started off from our house to Blacktown via the bus. Once at Blacktown station, we took the train to Penrith.

Once in Penrith, we had initially planned to walk to and across the Yandhai Nepean Crossing but it started raining. So we took another bus to Emu Plains, just across the Yandhai Nepean Crossing.

Emu Plains is the westernmost residential suburb in the outskirts of the Greater Western Sydney area. We stopped by the Laughing Boy Cafe to grab some brunch and coffee. I ordered the hash brown mountain for myself while Jo had the breakkie burrito.

We ordered the large coffee as well, and the coffee was a little light on strength and was more milky. The food was pretty good but with the public holiday surcharge, it cost us a fair bit ($75 for the two).

Once we were done with brunch, the rains had stopped as well so we decided to walk over the bridge and walk back to the station.

The Yandhai Nepean Crossing is a pedestrian bridge. It is also the longest single clear-span footbridge in Australia. There's space for pedestrians and cyclists though we didn't see too many cyclists. The bridge spans the Nepean river which supplies potable water for Sydney and flows downstream to eventually form the Hawkesbury River. On the river, we could see a bunch of people practicing rowing. The crossing is also a part of the Penrith Great River walk, an 8km walk offering views of the Nepean River and Blue Mountains. The walk looks pretty straightforward and is something we'd like to do in the near future. For now, we crossed the bridge, walked over to the Explorers' Memorial - a monument to the explorers who discovered a route across the Blue Mountains to the Bathurst Plains.

We head back to Penrith, taking a bus to Minchinbury and then to home.