| Leader | Mentor | Understudy | Tail Ender | |
| Standards | Jan Bbr | Chris S | Jan Bw | Margaret |
| Alternates | Bruce | Leonie | Michelle | Moira |
Distance <13.4km; vertical ascent m; duration 3hr 35min
Forty six trampers set out from town for Banks Peninsula/Horomaka with Alan driving. Our number included Associate Member Sun and visitors Les, David, Brent and Peter. We arrived at Pigeon Bay at 10.50am. For some of us it was all new.
Māori legends about this place include Tūterakiwhānoa a benevolent god whose task was to make Te Waipounamu habitable. His work included the creation of bays, harbours and estuaries, among them Pigeon Bay. Another involves Maui who, resting after fishing up the North Island, was confronted by an evil giant. Maui cast the giant into the sea and heaped mountains upon him. Throughout the winter the giant remained still but in summer he stirred causing the land to split forming Akaroa Harbour. Maui subdued the giant again by piling more mountains on top of him until the next summer when he stirred again forming Pigeon Bay.
Ngāi Tūahuriri, a sub tribe of Ngāi Tahu were living in the bay when Europeans began arriving in the 1800s. Whalers were followed by French settlers and then in 1842 the Sinclair and Hay families from Scotland arrived. Descendants of the latter still live here.
It was a blue sky turquoise sea sort of day at the bay. Hot enough for boots to kick up dust – a marked contrast with the mud of the previous week’s walk. We started out from the Boating Club following the water’s edge and then climbed onto grassland. A grove of eucalyptus provided welcome shade for our morning tea stop. Then it was up a track to meet the farm road. There were views of the mussel farm and of boats on the horizon whetting appetites to be sailing (one walker recounted past adventures sailing from Lyttelton to Pigeon Bay) or eating something delicious from the sea.
The walk is mostly open grassland with a little coastal scrub and the occasional group of watching cows. We were brought to a halt at 12.30pm by a cattlestop and signage advising that private property Annandale was over the brow of the hill. Annandale’s website advertises that it offers “luxury villa accommodation with total privacy and relaxed informality in a historic and dramatic landscape”. We opted for a relaxed and informal lunch on the hillside with dramatic landscape (and seascape) in front of us.
The Alternates, numbering 24, walked the same out and back route as the Standards. Along the way Sun lost the sole of her boot and running repairs needed to be done. Sadly Sun’s repaired boot didn’t last the distance. Happily a passing farmer offered Sun a ride back to the beginning where some of the Standards had time to dabble hot feet in the sea before the rest of the Alternates returned.
Text by Jen
Sources:
Banks Peninsula – Cradle of Canterbury, Gordon Ogilvie, Government Printer, 2007
Old Maori place names around Akaroa Harbour by Louis J. Vangioni; with supplementary notes by D. J. C. Pringle
