Big Lagoon Beach

Sunday 14 July 2013

Big Lagoon Beach

Saturday 13th July 2013

I left home in the dark this morning and arrived at the start of the walk on South Cape Spur 1 at 7.45am. There was some slight misty drizzle falling but that did not last long. I headed off to the sounds of lyrebirds through a forestry gate and was soon walking through nice forest. After about 3 kms. another forestry gate was reached and beyond this the track deteriorated to become an old 4WD track which has been seriously eroded because of overuse and by people making extra tracks over time. Thankfully, this area is now closed to vehicles, so, hopefully, the country will regenerate to some degree. The tracks were filled with water in lots of places but it was possible to walk the whole distance without getting wet feet.
After 1'45" Big Lagoon Beach was reached and followed north east to the point. Along this beach were quite a few live crabs, and of course plenty of flotsam and jetsam. Once the point was reached, I rock hopped around to the beach on the lagoon side and walked back south west to the end of the beach where there were some good sitting rocks for a lunch break. It was so peaceful looking out over the lagoon and the surface of the water was like glass.
I then tried to follow a track back to the outward leg but it was full of water and the scrub was too thick to bash through so I backtracked down the beach a short distance and cut across the peninsula to the ocean side. I arrived back at the car at 2.05pm.
This was an enjoyable walk, the beaches were very nice and deserted and I saw no footprints on either of the beaches. It probably would be very difficult if not impossible to walk the beach on the lagoon side if the tide was high but it should not be a problem to cut across to the ocean side at any stage as the peninsula is quite narrow.
Distance: 23.4 kms.
Time: 6'20"
Ascent: 215 metres
There is a map and gpx file at Everytrail.
Click here to download GPX track.