In my previous post I mentioned that I have been spending time with my family and going adventuring with them. So in the coming weeks I thought I would share some of my experiences of our adventures with you.
I spent some of my childhood years growing up on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. And I still have family that live in this area, so my Christmas was spent staying here as well. It was lovely being back there again and seeing some of the houses that I used to live in and driving past some of the schools that I attended. (They seem so much smaller than I remember – it shows just how much I have grown!) In this time we were able to revisit some of the places that we used to go adventuring as well as discover some new ones.
One particular place that we revisited was Cape Schanck. Cape Schanck is a beautiful area made up of numerous beaches, a number of walks and a light house. I remember going here as a kid and there is one particular rock pool that we would go to as a family. We decided to try and find it again on this trip and we managed to pick the first hot day after Christmas to go, which meant that we encountered lots of traffic as we drove up from Mornington. And the carpark was no different! There were cars lined up both sides of the road for about a kilometre before we actually got to the carpark itself. We decided to continue to the carpark and see if we would be blessed with a spot there, which we were! This meant we didn’t have to walk for ages to get to the carpark before we could start the walk itself.
We set off on the walk, enjoying the views and anticipating the prospect of a refreshing swim. At a certain point you get to the top of a hill and have to descend down many stairs to get to the beach – I always try not to think about the fact that this means I have to go up all the stairs on the return journey, although this time it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Once we got to the bottom, we went down the stairs to the right towards Pulpit Rock. We rock hopped our way around past Pulpit Rock and before long we reached the rock pool. It was exactly as I remember it and it was very enticing as I was very ready for a swim at this point.
I am not a huge fan of swimming at the beach for a number of reasons – jellyfish and rough surf being some. I generally prefer to swim in fresh water, whether it be lakes or rivers. But ocean rock pools are different. Because they don’t have the waves constantly coming in, I quite enjoy them, and they are very refreshing. Often they are very clear with beautiful views of the floor below. They feel like they should be a lot shallower than they actually are.
We enjoyed our swim immensely, especially once we had become numb from the initial cold and then after a while we lay out on the rocks in the sun to warm up again. Eventually we made our way back along the rocks to the boardwalk and made our way home again.
We actually went out again the next day and found another beach that had a rock pool in it and enjoyed another swim. This one was one that I hadn’t been to before at a place called Cairns Bay. My sister had been here before and took us along and we enjoyed another refreshing swim, and this one had a number of shallower pools that felt like a spa bath – they were so warm! There was no way I could have gone back in the big pool after sitting in the shallower ones for a little while. It was another beautiful place to sit and watch the ocean and for the more adventurous in my family, to try and climb up the cliffs (successfully, I might add).
I really enjoyed both of the rock pools that we visited on this trip and I would definitely go back to both of them again if I had the chance!
The Barefoot Adventurer 