Sep 16 2015

Brighton Beach south

Published by under Trampers

Location: 15 km.
5. 16/9/2015. Trampers. Brighton to Kuri Bush.
Seven trampers started out from Brighton to walk the beach to Kuri Bush. The weather was overcast, but fine all day, & no wind, which made pleasant beach walking.
As lunch was taken before we reached Kuri bush,

Lunch. (Heb pic)

Lunch. (Heb pic)

we never quite made it all the way there before turning back. As the tide was starting to come in,

(Heb pic)

(Heb pic)

we walked some of the way back on the road, until we could get back

(Heb pic)

(Heb pic)

onto the beach. – Heb.

4. 7/11/2013. Both. Brighton to Bruce Rocks. Leader: G Haggie.
3. 10/11/2010. Trampers. Brighton Beach walk south. Medium. Leaders: All.

Brighton-Sth. Beach walk. GPS of route, courtesy Ken

This was the first tramp without a recce or leader. Overworked leaders had begun complaining as low tramper numbers had meant frequent leadership duties. Ironically 10 of us turned up on the day. We had morning tea at the same spot as last time – at the point where the unbroken beach gives way to rocky outcrops and small bays. As you can see, the tide was well out.

Lunch stop.

The two small waterfalls pictured in the last tramp were almost indiscernible trickles, so dry had the season become. So far out was the tide, that we were well beyond the point we had reached on the previous occasion. Fortunately Ken drew our attention to the fact that we had gone over 8 km, only about 2 km short of Kuri Bush. Far enough. So we lunched. On the way back some striated rock face drew our attention.

Rock face

We got well strung out on the walk back with one or two getting well ahead and a tail-end group dropping well back. But we all got there, with several taking the opportunity to enjoy going bare-foot in the surf.
However we all made good time covering 17 km all up, getting back to the cars about 2.30 p.m.
A lovely sunny day. Tide well out. Good hard sand. It was great. – Ian
2. 20/8/2008 Trampers. Brighton Beach walk south. Medium. Leaders: Ian, Sabina
Tea stop. Lex, Ken, Pat, George, Sabina, Who?.

Tea stop

This beach tramp from Brighton south was merely a replacement for a soggy winter Spiers Road circuit but proved to be a gem. After the first unbroken beach walk from Brighton, the small sandy bays at its south end were a welcome delight and of endless interest.

The rocky points between them proved not too difficult to negotiate, provided one carefully stepped between slippery seaweed. Again there was constant interesting variety of shapes and rocky pools.

Waterfall

Waterfall

Waterfall

Waterfall

(Of course a welcome sunny day interrupting a dreary wet August was quite a help too.) And to top off the specialness of the day, George observed that this was the first time the club had attempted the walk, although the Trixies had it on their calendar.
This is a walk to be planned only when low tide occurs between 12.00 and 1.00 p.m. as at high tide the sea comes right up to the steep banks. As it chanced it was a 12.00 p.m. low tide day. 1.00 p.m. would have been even better as we had to plan our return early enough to get back beyond the last rocky point and onto the unbroken beach again before the returning sea had encroached too much.

A solitary fisher

A solitary fisher

And at this point was a further point of interest. George had told leaders Sabina and Ian when they were still at the planning stage that horse riders used a parallel track through the sandhills when the tide was full, so here was a landscape of its own to vary the return trip and avoid the soft sand of the upper beach that the returning tide would have forced us onto. Mainly marram grass and lupin, the dips and rises, gullies and ridges led on and on in a world seemingly quite divorced from road on one side and beach on the other, interrupted only by a web of road-to-beach tracks constantly crossing our walk.
At last, the return to the cars with nine of us having enjoyed a day of welcome break in the weather and a rewarding treat of beautiful hidden bays of which we had hitherto been completely ignorant. – Ian

1. 10/10/2007. Hikers. Beach Walk. Brighton. Easy. Leaders: Jean, Dot B.

No responses yet




Trackback URI | Comments RSS

Leave a Reply