03/07/2023: Running Out Of Beans

Some days I'm full of beans and can zoom off on my bicycle, ironing out hills and demolishing head winds at awesome speeds like 15 kph.  Other days the road may as well be made of glue, the slightest breeze threatens to destroy any cycling equilibrium that I may have gained, and even the downhills are a struggle.  That's just the way it rolls when riding and, as I discovered recently, the way it works when hiking as well.

Puffed up with my recent achievements of 200km/month since the start of the year, I decided to do something different and go for a walk instead. On a very cold dull day I caught the train down to Marion to partake of the Marion Coastal Walk to Hallett Cove Conservation Park. 

The sea was still, barely a wave to slop up onto the rocks.

With sea and sky the same colour, it was sometimes difficult to see where one ended and the other began.

Big ships marched up and down the horizon on their way to or from Port Adelaide.

The path followed the sea closely, traipsing up and down over little headlands and climbing endless steps through short, sharp gullies where little rivulets gurgled their way out to sea.

Sooo many steps! And no beans today...

Unfortunately my legs were not as committed to the whole hiking thing as I was and they complained bitterly as I plodded diligently up and down the steps, taking plenty of photo opportunities aka rests along the way.

 

Yellow throated scrub wren; New Holland honeyeater; Cormorants.

 

As luck would have it, the steps up and down through the steepest and most picturesque gullies had succumbed to erosion and rust, and big yellow signs firmly commanded me to take a detour. I grudgingly trudged up a steep but boring suburban street all the way to the railway line while diligent gangs of high-visibility men banged and clattered and tried their best to build a path and steps that would better resist the assault of poor soil, salt air, and gravity.

The path wandered along below glass-fronted mansion.  Who washes the windows on those things?

The Conservation Park was tucked in just before that last headland.

Roger met me at the gate to the Conservation Park where we enacted the morning coffee ritual while I indulged in a spot of camera envy with a fellow photographer whom we were able to rescue from the disasterous error of leaving her boot wide open with her handbag on full display.  Bellies awash with coffee, having done our Good Deed For The Day, we set off on a tour of the Conservation Park.

The highlight of the Conservation Park was the smoothed and striated glacial pavement which was identified by one Professor Tate back in 1875, not that that stopped anyone from using the area for farming, grazing, and even a little bit of mining.  

There was little left of the farmhouses, just a few stony ruins.

 In  1976, following twenty years of fierce lobbying, the area was set aside as a conservation park and was finally safe from the suburbia that crept toward its boundaries.  

The Sugarloaf.

The Coastal Path wandered through the Conservation Park on its way toward Seacliff.

With steps, of course.

By the time all the walking was done I was more than ready to go home where I appeased the cat with brushing and providing a lap on which he could sit.  

I was quite happy to sit and provide a cat lap.  Sitting suited my tired legs just fine.