This walk is along the Patricia Trail, through the Berowra Valley Regional Park, in the Sydney suburb of Cherrybrook. This is a more outer suburb than my previous walks, and I drove here with my wife and our dog Scully. We wanted somewhere with a bushwalking track that we could take Scully on to get some exercise. Most bushland areas in Sydney don't allow dogs at all, so we had a limited choice of places to go, and found this one.
The trail starts from Patricia Place, a quiet suburban street in Cherrybrook.
This is the beginning of the trail. It leads into the Berowra Valley Regional Park, a fairly large bushland park encompassing much of the Berowra Creek valley. The terrain is steep and covered with thick bush growth. It would be hard work blazing a new trail through this terrain. Fortunately we had a ready made fire trail path to follow.
Scully blazing the trail ahead of us.
It was her birthday on Thursday, so she's still wearing her birthday bandana. Here she's investigating something to one side of the trail.
The trail itself is fairly easy to follow, although it got a little bit overgrown in places. And muddy, from the recent rain.
It's a dry sclerophyll forest, with some grassy undergrowth along the cleared region around the trail.
This view is down the steep hill leading down to the creek. The park is broad and the creek is not very close - we didn't see it at all.
After heading gently downhill for a while we climbed back out of the valley. Lots of undergrowth here.
We emerged at another street: Daphne Place. A lot of the streets in this suburb are named after female names. A quick look at Google Maps reveals streets named: Anne, Jennifer, Josephine, Carmen, Miranda, Nadine, Colleen, Hayley, Kate. Rather than return the way we came, we decided to do a loop by walking back along the streets.
Daphne Place curls around and up the hill. This is looking back down the way we came. Because Cherrybrook is an outer suburb, there are lots of big houses here on large properties here, compared to more compact places on tighter properties in the inner city. Many of the houses here have well maintained gardens.
Except this house went for the full virgin bushland look for their front yard.
Map of our walking route, starting at Patricia Place at the top and proceeding clockwise.