Daily Photo – Bathing Beach Estuary

I caught a lift with a local who was heading to Lee Bay and the Rakiura Track. When I told him I was wanting to walk from the Mamaku Point Reserve back to Oban, he’d promised to drop me off at the northern end of Horseshoe Bay, where the beach meets the Reserve. It was here that I began my walk back to Oban, a distance of about five kilometres. Horseshoe Bay features a long, flat beach surrounded on three sides by bush, along with a handful of houses overlooking the sand, the bay and beyond to Foveaux Strait. With the tide well out and nobody else around, I decided to walk along the sand. There were footprints heading in both directions. Clearly other people had enjoyed the scenery and the idea of walking close to the tide, although there was no sign of them now.

At the end of the bay I rejoined the road and cut up through the bush before descending on the other side where it opened out onto Butterfield Beach. Once again, I walked on the sand for as long as I could, before rejoining the road for a short stretch and arriving at yet another beach, this one called Bathing Beach. For the most part, the weather had been kind, but by the time I arrived at the beach, the weather was changing. I decided not to hang around and was pleased that the final section of the walk climbed steadily over yet another hill before dropping down again into Oban.