Lakeview Road and West (Day 6)

It was a lovely sunny morning though quite windy. I set out with Carolyn for a drive on the west side, hoping to take in John Pearce Park and Duttona Beach. Once on the back roads I found a small bit of colour, some individual trees looked quite nice but they were far between and the groves of trees were pretty much solid tones of green. I did find a few spots to stop and grab a few photos but mostly it was just driving in the sun enjoying the day.

I arrived at the John Pearce Park and we set off to walk to the grassy area. I noticed that they had fenced off most of the park, claiming it was unsafe. By the grass area they had cut almost half of it off with a new fence that it seems most just pushed down and went over. I think the bureaucracy that put it up for some misguided sense of safety quite over did it. There needs to be a balance between real safety concerns and just trying to cover ones ass. The fence really damages the splendid value this park has to offer. They really just need to shore up the actual dangerous areas not take the easy way out. By over doing it people will be more inclined to ignore the whole fencing effort rather than take it seriously and if they think that will absolve them of anything, well think again.

We next pushed on to the Duttona Beach area, here we met a similar sign on the lower property which has communal access to the beach. It seems that some estate left the property to the province who now want to keep people off of it. Still, they have garbage cans on it to accept trash should people want to be there! Talk about a confused message, again I suspect they put up the signs simply to protect themselves rather than provide useful services to the community. The beach area was quite beat up with trees fallen and the high wind was pushing the waves high-up on the shore. The place seemed quite run-down from two years ago, though the foot path remained well-worn and in obvious use.

Done with the beach, I back tracked to a small cemetery we had passed and there I explored, looking for the oldest stone I could read. There were many quite recent additions so this area is obviously still being used. I found one stone dating back to 1848 and there were many I couldn’t read that may be older. The one sad thing about looking over the stones is finding those of children, one was only 2 days old when they died. We have much to be thankful for.