Cover photo- Judes looks out over the Tasman Sea on warm early evening.
Not a bad morning… a cup of tea to start the day, dishes done, bed made, bikes setup and it’s off 15km to Westport and while we’re there we must try the famous Pies before the return ride.
The start of the road from the Star Tavern is along a private road that runs along side the main road before entering a small windy bush track about 400m in length before crossing the main road and onto a boringly long stretch of track. This track then turns left and heads to the coastline which then continues on to Carters Beach. Carter’s Beach is a upmarket looking coastal village and appears by our ride through, a nice wee place.
Once through Carters Beach we enter the estuarine area which is the start of one of the beautiful sections nature wise on the Kawatiri Trail. The entry to this encounter is the towering ship like masts of the Martins Creek suspension bridge, offering elevated views of the wetlands, wildlife and wider West Coast scenery which leads into a 700 metre boardwalk through pristine wetlands. Upon leaving the forest, riders and walkers then get to see more of the wetlands and we were fortunate enough to see a beautiful Heron , I’m sure most would agree that this is one of the best parts of the Carters Beach to Westport sections
The Carters Beach section is actually full of history and there are quite a few Information Boards along the route. The wildlife especially the Weka are not that afraid of humans and they come close enough to get a good snapshot.
It’s not far now to the town of Westport and Jude and I are looking forward to trying these famous pies at the “West Coast Pie Company” after Manu & Colin from “Off The Grid” series raved about them.
Arrived at the West Coast Pie Company and they had a huge selection of beautiful looking pies that said eat me written all over them. We chose a different pie each that we thought may do the job to satisfy the animal in us. The flavours of the fillings were awesome… however they were that hot you practically had to use your teeth like tweezers to get a little bit out of the pie at a time to prevent burning your lips. The other thing was the pastry was thick and made the pies look bigger than they were, overall I think the flavours were beautiful but they need to turn the temp down just a tad.
The bike ride home was letting both of us know that the pies pastry was too much and it gave us an excuse to use the bikes power assist and have some fun on the way back to Cape Foulwind.
Once back and with the weather looking like it was going to remain fine for the afternoon it was off to the Denniston Platue for another visit.
As said we have been up there a few times and what surprises me is that some of the mining photos near the end of the mines existence reminds me of my coal mining days down Morley mine in Ohai in the early 70’s, the coal boxes, the winches, the banjo shovels and even the clothes, the only difference was the helmets when I was a coal miner were plastic.
It’s hard to explain how looking at this reminds me of my time back in the early 70s when I was a 15 year old and working at the mines, firstly as a spragger (flicking steel spikes into the spokes of the coal boxes as they came out of the mine), then when 16 years old went underground as a trucker (supplying and removing coal boxes to the mine head to be filled and helping to fill them using a Banjo shovel, a short shovel with a large wide blade that resembled a banjo). They were hard days but fun days.
Once back home from visiting Denniston, we sat over at the park overlooking the Tasman and enjoyed the brief period of warmth before the sun disappeared behind the incoming storm.
Tomorrow is a day for laundry and rest.