Location: Royal National Park – Lady Carrington Drive 21kms (Out & Back)

Description: This trail is a very scenic, reasonable flat trail that is suitable for the whole family.  This trail is great for a Sunday picnic at Audley and then a ride or walk or the for the more serious half marathon trainers.  This trail follows the upper reaches of the Hacking River from Audley Weir up to Waterfall.  This trail can easily be extended by runners to include some great hill training.

Pros

• Awesome location and scenery;
• Reasonable all weather, except for the heaviest rain;
• No need to run all the way out, turn around half way for a 10km return;
• Great for the whole family;
• Cafe / takeaway in Audley for lunch (you know you want to)
• Also great for a leisurely Sunday bike ride.

Cons

• Park entry fee required to park at Audley and or Waterfall;
• Can get a little busy on weekends, but who can blame them.

Review

This is a popular track for both runners and mountain bike riders on the weekend and for good reason. The scenery is breath taking and the track well maintained (more from good luck then management I suspect). The track can be run or ridden from either end (Audley or Waterfall), my preference is for Audley given that it is deceptively downhill from Waterfall to Audley and I much prefer running up hill first . This is a good track for getting up the km’s in prep for a half marathon as I did leading up to the SMH half.

Map