Tuesday - beach walk and The Mussel Inn

Up fairly late this morning as we knew we were not meeting up with any one from the TR group until the evening. After consulting our Frenzy Guide (interestingly this entire area is not mentioned in the Rough Guide) we decided to drive up Dry Road around the Whanganui Inlet. We checked the times for the tides as we knew we needed to start our preferred walk sometime after high tide, but had to be able to finish it well before the tides rose again. Luckily the times were perfect, so we set off to drive the 6 kms of sealed road, then the 34 kms of dirt track to our destination.

The road wound round Whanganui Inlet with beautiful views at every turn. There were frequent causeways at each little side bay, and occasional climbs through the bush. Towards the end of the drive the scenery opened up and became flat farming land, surrounded by high bluffs.

We stopped briefly at Knuckle Hill view point, but only at the car park. To actually walk to the lookout would have taken 3 hours round trip.

Eventually we reached Paturau Beach and set off on our walk. We turned south on the beach, and the first rock formations we came to looked like brains! Very strange rocks indeed.

Further on we came to long stretches of sand, then rocky headlands where we had to wait for the tide to go further out before we could run round the corner avoiding the waves.

We came across arches in the rock, and numerous rock pools. After walking for an hour we had our lunch in the shade of a huge cliff, seated on a log.

We walked on for another 30 minutes, then turned round for the walk back. By the now the tide was further out so we could explore more of the rocks, and see some of the very flat rock formations which had been invisible before.

It was a very hot and sticky walk, and we only found two sections with shade on the entire walk. But we did see some amazing rocks and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Back at the car we gratefully switched on the air conditioning, and drove back to our delightful lodgings.

In the evening we had tables booked at the Mussel Inn, a local restaurant several kms outside of Collingwood. We gave Frank and Ann a lift while most of the others arrived on the Eco Tours Bus. We had a lovely meal, with good beer, and wine, and lots of fun conversations.  It was only on the way home that I realised Ann was the quilter I had been planning to talk to at the weekend meeting, but failed to do so. We had a few minutes of chat, but will have to continue the conversation over lunch tomorrow.