This was our last stop before getting in line for the ferry back to the mainland. We parked off of Niagara Road and M read in the car while I walked the muddy trail down to this small beach in a northern corner of Otter Bay.
AERIAL VIEW
It's a small, sandy pocket beach. I suspect the sandiness is due to steep slopes and a small stream that supply it with upland sediment and to its pocket nature, which keeps the sand from leaving once it arrives at the beach.
This is the last of my Pender Island posts and I should make two acknowledgements. The first is to Theo Dombrowsi, whose Secret Beaches of the Salish Sea (The Southern Gulf Islands) has been a valuable resource, both here and on Salt Spring Island. The other is to the Pender Island Parks and Recreation Commission and its volunteers, who have done a wonderful job of making so many beaches available, of marking them well, and of maintaining the trails and stairways.
In usual fashion, all nine of my Pender Island posts are labeled, and can be found at:
Gravel Beach [Pender Island]
Finally, this is the 700th post to Gravel Beach since December of 2005. The collection keeps growing and I trust that it is occasionally helping someone to stumble on a new beach or to look at an old beach differently.
Bricky Bay is a small cove and pocket beach on North Pender Island that was once home to a brick plant - rows of pile stubs crisscross the shore and the beach itself is a wonderful mix of native gravel and red bricks in various stages of rounding and disintegration.
AERIAL VIEW
There are also some nice shots at the Island Home blog (also links to other nice Pender Island photos and artwork).
This was one of many nicely marked public beach access points around Pender - at the end of a short trail between residential properties. This particular one was a short walk from the cabin where we were staying on South Pender.
AERIAL VIEW
If it had been swash-aligned, it would have been a very nice pocket beach, but the predominant waves probably arrive obliquely and are further complicated by a lot of offshore islets and reefs. There's not much sand and gravel - just a thin band at the base of the bank - and the shore is mainly cobbles that probably roll around in storms, but don't go too far.
The central portion of the beach was backed by a low bluff of glacial material, eroding into someone's treeless lawn. A new stairway was being built at the far end of the beach to replace one that had succumbed to falling trees and possibly a collapsed bank.
The most intriguing thing was the spherical boulders or concretions weathering out of the sandstone.
