What a wicked day out with the club today!

The Albany tramp was put in place the day before as the forecasted wind speed & weather was looking dodgy for docking at Motuihe Island today. It turned out to be a good call, as the ferry crossing was cancelled!

Despite the wet forecast, we had a good group roll up this morning ready to walk the distance!

As we hit the trails & bush tracks finding out this was new ground for a fair number of the group. We only had a brief tinkling from the rain clouds just after we dropped down from the trig, whilst admiring the all the significantly large old native Puriri.

Heading down hill, Lucas Creek waterfall was looking really pretty despite it being low tide, where the pool at the bottom is estuarine (fresh water and sea water mix).

Before long we're walking through Kell Park and along the grass beside Lucas Creek & stopping to investigate, errm nosh on the yummies hanging from the old fruit trees that are still there from when Albany still had lots of orchards.

Crossing the Albany Highway, we reach the land of the massive trees! Most of the Totara, kahikatea and assorted other trees in here are about 25-30 metres or more tall and cover the river edge either side of the river tracks we're traversing. It's such a relaxing environment with the water lazily moving it's way down stream, the shaded canopy letting through rays of sunshine sparkling on the water, that thankfully wasn't in flash flood this trip!

To add a bit of novelty to the trip, we head through another old orchard area in public parkland and noshing on heritage fruit as we go. Popping out of this area, having just said I've always thought there should be a track on the other side of the river just here, I spot a brand new track!

As we all love new tracks, especially when so many of our favourites are closed, we head in to go investigate. What a cool track and it's obvious the track cutters have a good sense of humour! Once you've visited you'll understand, there's even a para shooting alien in a tree! The track has extremely colourful track markers, one even had a bandanna and there is debris that had landed there after the tornado that caused so much havoc in 2011.

We head out a different way & head down stream to cover true left of the stream heading back to the cars via the lakes.

Some pretty decent distance covered again today, or still bone dry tracks, can't wait til the next club tramp.