Andersons & The Oaks: Top to Bottom

If you want one big, satisfying day on the dirt near Sydney, this is the ride. It links two classic Blue Mountains firetrails, Andersons and the Oaks, into a top-to-bottom traverse that pairs long, cruisy forest descents with climbs that will genuinely empty your legs. Hop off the train at Wentworth Falls Station, backtrack down to Kings Tableland Road, and the pavement soon ends, dropping you onto deserted dirt with black cockatoos calling from the white-barked gums overhead. This route is one of Matthew Crompton's picks from his Sydney gravel guide.

Andersons begins gently, an hour of easy forest cruising, before the trail tips into a screaming descent to the clear and deceptively deep waters of Bedford Creek at the bottom. The far bank is the crux: a corkscrewing grind up one steep switchback after another that may well have you walking before the grade finally slackens near the town of Woodford. Woodford Station marks the halfway point and doubles as a sensible bail-out if you are cooked, or a fresh starting point if you would rather take on only the second half.

The Oaks firetrail is in better shape than Andersons and is the safer pick if you are underbiking on narrow rubber. It undulates through forest and over bare patches of bedrock before delivering the feature it is famous for: a fast, flowing descent five kilometres long, past waterbars worth catching air off and the old-growth stand of the Blue Labyrinth at the bottom.

Near the foot of the trail you reach a fork where you can branch left into a roughly 5 km section of rocky, rooty singletrack known, fittingly, as Pinchflat Alley. It is good techy fun, but only worth it on serious rubber, so stick to the firetrail if you value your tyres. Either way the ride stings you at the very end with a steep, twisty climb of around 120 vertical metres up to Glenbrook Station, where coffee and a bacon and egg roll wait at the top.

Come on 38c tyres at the absolute minimum, with wider and cushier always better given the rough, rocky sections, and carry a well-stocked repair kit because help is a long way off out here. The traverse runs station to station, so no car shuttle is required, and the Sydney train will carry your bike without booking or boxing. It rides well year-round, though autumn through spring offers the most comfortable conditions, and note that the Glenbrook Causeway river ford near the end can run impassably deep after heavy rain.