Rifle Range Road 2019

Today we're taking the walk that had to be cancelled a couple of weeks ago, Rifle Range Road at Sandford.

The forecast is for gale force winds later in the day, but it doesn't look too bad when we leave Kingston.

We park at the junction of Rifle Range Road and Gellibrand Drive where there's plenty of parking.

Bob is our leader and takes the decision to walk along the beach first as the breeze isn't unpleasant at the moment.

Down Rifle Range to the beach

 You can drive down to a small parking area just off the beach, but we like to build up our kilometres and walk down.

Mortimer Bay with Maria Point in the distance

Gorringes Beach, mainly made of small shells

I wonder where everyone sits if there's a flock of birds?

 We'll be walking the length of the beach which curves out of sight until we reach the end which is a bird sanctuary and fenced off. Here is a wide sandy section leading up the an inland track that could be walked in bad weather.

Turning right, we head for a junction with a good number of comfortable rocks available for Morning Tea.

Morning Tea

Cloud capped Mount Wellington in the distance

Morning Tea complete, we head along a track leading along the foreshore of Ralphs Bay. This is part of the Tangara Trail walking tracks in this area.

We follow the track for a while before turning uphill to Gellibrand Drive, turning left for a short distance to pick up another part of the tracks, leading down.

You can have a bit of variety on these walks

This track passes along the bottom of several properties, not all friendly.

I'm pretty sure this isn't a dog, plus it doesn't look particularly dangerous

Puppies?

On we go, heading for lunch

We find our spot at the end of a road the track crosses, complete with rocks. Peggy offered me a spot on her rock, but as it was a knife edge, I declined, preferring to walk around looking uncomfortable to make the others feel guilty. It didn't work.

Afterwards, we continue on. Looking back at previous posts about walks here, it appears this was called the Emu walk for obvious reasons.

Lunch

On the Emu track

I think we see eye to eye

This track leads back to our Morning Tea spot where we turn right, heading back towards the far end of the beach.

But, after a short distance, we head off to follow several small tracks through the bush.

Gorringes Beach is just to our left

Walking along here, I hear a cry of "Cyclist!" and move off to the side while about ten 11-12 y.o. girls and boys on mountain bikes come past.

I must say they all said "Hello" and told us how many were behind them. Very polite. Great to see them outside and not sitting looking at their screens. I suppose that will change for some in the next couple of years.

We continue on, crossing a large drain and the road again for another track just up from our crossing point. This leads up a nice steady climb to the top of a hill. We're on our way back to the cars.

Looking back down

Looking up

At the top, we cross another road to continue down the other side.
The track crosses a series of courts with multiple driveways leading off.

Going down

Looking back up

It's not long before we reach the cars.

Great day for a walk, despite the weather forecast and Bob took us on an interesting route.

We had 10 walkers and covered 13.74km in 4hrs.

Many other tracks in the area for future walks.

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