Marfells Beach

Today we’ve had the weather we’ve been hoping for for the last week: cloudless and warm, with a light onshore breeze. Bring it on!
We had a huge drive today to Seddon (NOT!) about 17km from Ward Beach. Found a very nice café for morning tea and the best cheese scones in a long while. You can tell we’ve hit wine country: the Awatere Valley is covered in vines as far as the eye can see and we passed many vineyards we’ve never heard of. We took a drive out to Yealands country and wondered how their business is doing since the scandal – they were convicted of adding sugar to millions of litres of wine that was to be exported to Europe.
We backtracked a little to go round to the south of Lake Grassmere (where they produce salt) and back out to the coast and another DOC camp, at Marfells Beach. We are parked about 2 metres from the start of the beach and what a fabulous spot. The sea has calmed off since the storm but is still discoloured.
We packed some sammies (and some of Mum’s fruit cake) into the backpack along with a flask of tea and took off on foot along the beach to the point at the Southern end. What an amazing walk! The shellfish are (or were) obviously abundant here as most of the way we were crunching through piles of shells. There is currently a rahui (or ban) on collecting shellfish (other than crayfish) all the way along the coast back to Kaikoura, so that the populations can re-establish themselves after the earthquake.
From the point we could see all the way south to the lighthouse at East Cape (about 90mins walk each way apparently) but we decided 45 mins each way was enough for us today. And the incoming tide may have cut off our return trip! We sat on a rock at the edge of the water and were munching our lunch when all of a sudden, up popped a fully-grown seal in the water not 5 metres away. He (or she) looked at us for a few seconds, then did a leisurely full barrel-roll and with a flip of the flippers it glided away. How special was that!
We also saw another seal frolicking in the waves on the way home. All along the beach there are clumps of colourful daisies and succulents growing, as well as wild silverbeet… of which we have picked a potful for dinner tonight. We’ve just come inside after our first full outdoor happy hour of the trip – the sun has only just dipped behind a tree and we are feeling very sun-kissed!Read more