It’s been nine months since I last visited South Island beaches. So I am on my way south again. These days, I play this piece of music when starting a trip.
Time has come to go
Pack your bags, hit the open road
Our hearts just won’t die
It’s the trip keeps us alive…–
I left Whanganui last Monday morning, nearly four days ago. First stop after the Cook Strait ferry was Ward Beach on Tuesday morning where I spent an hour just after high tide. It being summer, there were quite a few campers there, mainly camper-vans. There were also some dolphins in the bay in front of the carpark.
I didn’t wander far on the beach but picked up a few interesting stones before hitting the road again.
I visited two beaches on Wednesday. I stopped off first at Timaru South, at the end of Scarborough Road. I spent just over an hour walking south towards the lighthouse and back.
Again, I found a few interesting stones, though most had been bashed about a bit – the resulting chips provide a challenge for the tumble polisher.
On Wednesday afternoon I arrived in Kakanui, having driven 850 kiolometres from home, and spent some time at Seadown Beach. It has changed significantly since I was last here nine months ago. Large amounts of sand have been heaped up and most of the stones have been covered. I was there at a very low tide and there were scatterings of wet stones along the waves’ edge.
I was especially alert for two types of stones here – the hard brown ones that contain bryozoa fossils and the softer lighter-coloured ones that I call “fossilised seafloor” stones. I found one of the former, a few of the latter, as well as some nice quartzites and jaspers.
I also visited the beach further south of Kakanui to check out what stones were now to be found there, with some success.
I woke up on Thursday with two problems. My calf muscles were very sore from all the walking in soft sand I had done the previous day, and my mobile phone needed replacing. So I drove back to Timaru to sort the phone, and then rested up in the afternoon back in Kakanui instead of doing more fossicking.
For more information on Ward Beach, see here: on Timaru South, see here; on Kakanui’s Seadown Beach, see here.
The next Part of this Series is here. The Series Index is here.
I prefer gems from the beach over the tunes ❗️
Thanks for your Comment. My Blog is headed “A Blog About Stone Gathering, Tumbling and Polishing, and Rocks and Landscapes, from New Zealand – With Musical Interludes”. Music is important to me, and the reasons I have included a piece of music in a Post is usually explained in the Index relating to it https://tumblestoneblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/07/the-first-five-musical-pieces-on-tumblestone/. TumbleStone Blog currently contains 577 Posts and so far just over 40 of them have music in them. Readers have different tastes and I know some of them look forward to the music items while I understand others are not interested. It’s just as well you can choose not to play the YouTube clips!
I recently removed ‘you tube’ and blocked malicious google 👎 …just saying
One doesn’t have to use google, there are alternatives! 👍🙂
I like a “Touch of Blue” and shared it on Flipboard. I’m quite new here. It is fantastic to bump into someone who is also interested in tumble stones and music.