Having a dog makes you get out more - we're dog sitting at the moment (more on that in another post) and so we have to get out twice a day to keep her happy and stop the back yard becoming full of excrement. We don't mind - any excuse for me to check to see if the beach is still there, after all.
We don't usually walk at this beach - mainly as we have to drive to it and it's off the main road we take to the next town, but it's a beach I used to play on all the time when Dad would go surfing. I realised it has a particular smell to it - nothing you'd notice, but evocative enough to trigger memories for me. Perhaps it's the particular seaweed there. We parked at Southside and walked along the cliffs to Bells - it's a famous surfing beach, but there was no one out on this day as it was onshore and not really surfable. That meant it was much quieter which suited us well.
Places like this, it's hard not to remember the 'old days'. THough the tide was low today I could remember surfing out there as the tide was coming in and getting smashed against the rocks. And there's photos of me when I'm four years old running round in the nude and the family leaning up against that big rock in the middle for a photo. I rememember finding crabs in the rockpools.
A quick warning - steer clear of the cliffs. A few years ago a young guy died in a cliff collapse - he'd been sheltering from the sun there on a hot day. A lot of the cliffss around there are prone to collapse - one should heed the signs!
Keep walking along this beach and two headlands up, we're spreading Dad's ashes, and one headland after that is where I now live. My whole heart is on this coast.
Amy absolutely loves the beach. Her family are beach people too. She'll chase sticks or just sniff and dig like proper dogs do. She loves to find a rock pool to cool down in.
There's nothing like seeing a dog's joy to lift the heart.
We walked along the base of the cliff and then walked up the Soutside steps, which was a bit of uphill for me but I get there eventually. We used to take the horses down this ramp to get onto the beach - we'd be in a lot of trouble if we did that now. Times have changed.
I love the twisted trunks of the moonah trees - they are so distinctive here and well loved.
It was a great little walk and if you have a little time it's actually a nicer way to see Bells Beach than arrive in the carpark - you get more of a sense of the landscape walking along the cliffs and round the bottom, though you can only do it on a low tide.
If you have more time you can do a big bush/beach loop by walking up to Point Addis via the Ironbark basin and cultural indigenous walk which is amazing too. We are really spoilt for choice along this coast.
With Love,
//:# (//:# (!worldmappin -38.37356 lat 144.27469 long d3scr))