Mikey got lost in Sydney's one-way system when he went to pick up the car this morning. He trippled the car's mileage on the journey back to the hostel. Admittedly it only had seven kilometres on the clock when he started, but that's pretty good going!

It was so windy outside, I was almost knocked over twice (OK, so one of those times I had my coat out behind me and I was pretending to fly...), it was a lot of fun. We had a bit of trouble getting out of the city because we only had the traditional hire-car map that shows three streets, and Sydney isn't easy to navigate even for me. But we managed it, and soon we were heading out to the Blue Mountains.

Continuing with our intention of never learning from our experiences, we drove along a road that threatened to be closed. At a botanic garden we had a bit of a wander, only a short one because Mikey isn't the most enthusiastic observer of pre-historic ferns, and we got to see a whole flock of red parrots fly over us. Which was nice. We checked about the road status and we were told that it was probably open, so we carried on after lunch. It was really, really cold, and there was snow along the edges of the road. I saw a dead wombat, too.

We had decided to cut short the scenic Blue Mountains drive because I hadn't noticed the scale on the pretty multi-coloured tourist map we'd picked up (I was navigating, I can't be expected to pay attention to little details like that!). If I had, I'd have been able to tell that the circular drive was well over 300 miles, and we probably wouldn't be able to do it all in a day. However, before we took the short cut, we noticed the Zig Zag Railway, and, as luck would have it, the little steam train was due for it's weekly journey at exactly the time we arrived in the car park.

I've never been a great fan of trains as they seem incapable of taking me where I want to go, and insist on being the wrong train for my journey, leaving me stranded fifty miles from my starting point, but steam trains are quite cute. And to make up for dragging Mikey through the botanic garden, we went on a train ride.

It was freezing cold, there was snow on the ground, and the train took about an hour and a half to do a couple of miles. The reason for the name was that the front bit of the train (some people would call that the engine, but technology's not for girls) had to go round to the other end every now and then. It was all very complicated and cold, but all the platforms had Harry Potter names (9 3/4; Azkaban; Hogsmeade) and we got to stand on the bridges and get steamed, and we drove over a viaduct, so it was a nice trip. The train was painted to resemble a Korean vehicle for reasons to do with film-making, but I didn't hear that. We got back in the car and turned the heating up.

The drive to Katoomba, our chosen destination, took another hour or so, and we arrived just as it was getting dark. We stayed at another YHA, this one ful of families with children and elderly women with big boots. There is something wrong with all of that. We cooked supper, Mikey watched a film or two and I had a 40-minute shower to try and warm up then snuggled in bed trying to stay warm and fell asleep.