Pancake Rocks

2 March 2010
In the early morning light a dark brown, flightless bird about the size of a domesticated hen wandered past our cottage – G got quite excited that at last he was seeing a kiwi in the wild. However when the bird became inquisitive and started looking in through the door he realised that this certainly wasn’t the naturally shy kiwi but a weka, its slimmer distant cousin which is frequently seen, even during the day, and is often bold enough to approach people for food, ah well. The reason for this morning’s early start was to get to Pancake Rocks before the busloads of tourists; we did but were quite disappointed that on the ‘official’ walk we were only able to observe the rocks from above and not get down to the beach – probably just as well considering the rough sea. So we’re glad we found the other remote beach last night – where we did a little beachcombing and G found a small piece of Jade; later today he was to have another disappointment when the man in the Jade shop told him it wasn’t! He is finding parts of this holiday quite frustrating as he is unable to bring back stones, driftwood and anything else he finds of interest (like the huge rusty iron hinge from Whitstable) to put in the garden because of the weight restrictions on our luggage. But we digress – pancake rocks are layers of sedimentary limestone that have been weathered to resemble enormous stacks of huge pancakes. The information notice explains that this is the result of stylobedding – a chemical process in which the pressure of overlying sediments creates alternating durable and weaker bands. (Do pub quizzes have a geology round?)