One of the great ways to get to know a city is to take a walking tour. They will usually guide you, pointing out, architecture, cultural and historical places of interest. They can give you the flavour of a city very quickly and provide you with a list of locations/areas that you may wish to explore in more detail at a later date. Walking tours have expanded to include food tours which take you to markets, bakeries, chocolatiers and cafes. It seems that there is a walking tour, either with a guide or self guided, to suit every need.
Sydney has lots of guided walking tours and a lot of them are free, Free Tours Sydney and I’m Free Tours are just two examples. Free Tours Sydney also has a three hour bus tour of the outer eastern suburbs including Watsons Bay and Bondi but you do have to pay $18 per person to help cover the bus running costs (details here) .It still makes it a much cheaper option many other bus tours.
The self guided walking tour from Bondi Beach to Coogee Beach is unusual in that it is a city walking tour along a coastal path. Of all the possible walking tours you can do in the city this is perhaps the best known and it is certainly worth making the effort to get out to Bondi to do it. The 333 and 380 buses from Circular Quay in the Central Business District will get you out to Bondi in about 45 minutes. You do need an Opal Card to travel on buses and other public transport in Sydney and this works in a similar way to the Oystercard in London. If you have done the Free Tours Sydney bus tour you can leave the tour when it reaches Bondi and walk the coastal path back.
The walk is 6Km and takes between two and three hours to complete depending how many times you stop along the way. We did it comfortably in two hours.
The path is well defined and has a concrete surface virtually all the way. There are some ups and downs as you might expect as you travel from cove to cove.
Leaving from them south end of Bondi Beach the walk climbs for a short while before you arrive at the blustery headland and Gaerloch Reserve. You definitely need to hang on to your hat here! The views are superb and it is easy to see why this is such a popular walk.
Bronte Beach (photo above) is about a third of the way along the walk and an excellent place to pause along the way. So much quieter than its near neighbour Bondi, as indeed are all the beaches on the walk.
The section of the coastal path by Waverley Cemetery was damaged in a storm in June 2016 and restoration work is yet to be completed. An alternative route through the cemetery ensures that you can complete the walk although you are asked to respect the cemetery and not take any photographs as you pass through. It is an impressive site in itself, perched as it is on the cliffs at Bronte, and some notable Australians are buried there.
Just before. you reach Coogee there is a reminder how dangerous fir can be in such dry areas.
Finally after two hours or so Coogee beach comes into view and its a short stroll down to have a well deserved cold one in the Coogee Pavilion Bar.
From here the 373 bus takes you back to Circular Quay after what is a memorable walk.
