Perfect Pitch

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With our first wedding anniversary safely tucked away, it was time to move on in the campervan once more. Today we followed the advice of the elderly couple we had met by the seal colony a few days ago and headed to Amberley Beach where we were promised a campsite with toilets and electricity for just $8 per night per pitch. Could this be too good to be true?

On our way to Amberley, we took a brief detour to Gore Bay to see the Cathedral Cliffs which we marked on our roadmap. It took a while for me to persuade Glynn to traverse another gravel road after all the bad experiences he's had with them so far but my perserverence paid off. The cliffs were nowhere near as spectacular as I had hoped but the beach looked inviting and the sun had come out to play. I pulled Glynn out of the van and we went for a stroll along the sand to get a closer look at the cliffs.

Gore Bay is a lovely place and it was bursting at the seems with holidayers although other than its proximity to Christchurch, I couldn't see why Gore Bay should attract more attention than anywhere else. At about 90m high, the cliffs aren't deperately impressive but they are slowly collapsing onto the beach as a result of some serious subsidence. From the angle of the layers in the rock it was easy to see just how drastically this landscape had altered and from the freshly tumbled rocks and ooze of clay at the base of the cliffs, it looked like quite a recent turn of events. The lopsided ground on the top of the cliffs was home to a number of trees that now stuck out almost at right angles to their normal direction of growth. It was an odd sight.

Back in the van, it didn't take us long to find the campsite at Amberley Beach and it was just as the old couple had said it would be. We found a nice pitch between a caravan and a converted bus, plugged our electrical bits in and vegged out all afternoon as we basked in the glorious sunshine. $8 per pitch - that's more like it!

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Photos

Historical Bridge
Call that historical? There's still asphalt on the road!

Look Out Jish!
Oh no! It looks like Jish is about to be gobbled up by a hungry New Zealand Hairy Monster!

Cathedral Cliffs
Deftly modelled by Glynn.

Cathedral Cliffs
Maybe 90 metres is quite high after all, thinks Jude.

Beach at Gore Bay
....but Jude forgot to bring her Hello Kitty bucket and spade :-(

Greetings!
The shadow Harris family say hi!