17 June 2007

South Bethells

page 4

Over to the right is what looks like a wonderful picnic spot for a fine day, with a track leading over to it.

At roughly the point where the grass meets the sky, however, the cliffs plummet vertically downward for rather more distance than I want to think about. I retreat swiftly and call Alice. She is much the same as Dan when it comes to heights, but with a lot less experience. I do enjoy some of the photos Dan grabs, though.

This is the sort of thing he's likely to stand on if he has the opportunity.

photo by Dan Hawthorn

It would be marvellous to be a bird and be able to check out this rockscape up close. (I don't fancy doing it as a human being, though.)

photo by Dan Hawthorn

We're still climbing. There are some big cliffs along this coast line.

Down below us the beach is looking smaller and smaller.

There's been some earthworks here not too long distant, and a marvellously coloured clay bank. Though it's pretty rough scrubland the road obviously still serves a purpose.

photo by Dan Hawthorn

photo by Dan Hawthorn

At the edge of the road, and quite common along the way here is a small blue iris - the kind that colonises clay banks around Helensville and adds its colour to the sombre pine forest at Woodhill.

We reach a T junction of sorts, with one arm of the T heading right for a few hundred metres along a narrow ridge with, Dan tells me, wonderful views. To the left, we turn inland and along a ridge through coastal scrub.

The trees here are pretty hardy.

Even the pampas grass has been given a recent hiding, and that takes more than a puff of wind.

We carry on along the track, passing a junction with an overgrown track heading down the souith slope towards Anawhata.

You wouldn't normally think of the tip of a piece of pampas grass as particularly powerful, but with a bit of wind lashing it around it makes its mark.

There's more of the pink manuka. Most tracks have what I think of as some "feature" vegetation. On the Cutty Grass track it was the Quintinia; on the Ian Wells Track, it was the rimu. This track it's definitely been the manuka.

There's a solid, icing sugar pink variety that nurserymen have developed for sale, bit I reckon it lacks the quite beautiful subtlety that this has.

Here's the more usual white form

We carry on along the ridge, where it's been a while since the bulldozer last went through, or else the rain and wind scour has been fairly severe.

Over the top of a knoll and the road heads down, rather less affected than the bit we've just been along.

Over to the right there's a patch of relative shelter where punga have claimed a foothold. Higher up and it's back to manuka.

There's even a small tanekaha. These are often a component of drier scrubland but it's not until I spot one that I realise there's been none so far - none that I've seen at any rate.

The beach is now a long way down.

Somewhere near here we find a sheltered spot with a dry bank to park our backsides and take out the thermoses and sandwiches. Dan has now shed his two jerseys and beanie as the day has warmed up. I have a bit more spare fat, and I've made do till now with a polyprop singlet and my usual microfibre tramping T-shirt. I't's surface:volume ratio, I reckon. I take longer to freeze, but also longer to warm up if I get badly cold.