Vulcan

Sunday 14 April 2024

Seven of us drove just short of Motanau Beach to a handy spur that leads to 412m Vulcan in beautiful rolling limestone country. Morning tea was at a giant curiously sculpted rock at point 324. The botanically inclined amongst us stopped to photograph green mistletoe on scrub plants. Doug enthused about a new NZ app called Aotearoa Species Classifier that can identify NZ plants without needing an internet connection.

We had an early lunch on Vulcan while appreciating rolling green farmland and a long stretch of coastline. Banks Peninsula was clouded in for a time and invisible but when it revealed itself, we were astonished to see it way out to sea. Such is the sweep of the Canterbury bight.

We chose to retrace our steps back to Motunau Beach Road, rather than continue an anticlockwise circuit. The tides were against us for a beach walk and after recent rain the gully that gives access to the beach could have turned to a sticky mud.

We filled in some of the missing circuit with a beach walk. It started as a boulder hop, then got onto a nice beach and by then the tide had gone out a fair way. The locals have built a very nice tree-lined track from the beach up to the houses. Most dwellings are more than baches and the residents seem to take pride in the locality. Back at the car park the lovingly polished Triumph cars on a club excursion had departed, and we too headed for home.

We were: Keith Hoard, Doug Woods, Kathryn Marshall, Peter Umbers, Kyung Sang Lee, Toyomi Furuta and Kerry Moore. [KM]