The final leg of our June Holidays road trip saw us spend two evenings in Sedgefield, a particularly favourite spot of mine seeing as I had spent countless school holidays there with my grandparents as a small kid.
As it so happens, the small town of Sedgefield is also home to the highest fossil sand dunes in South Africa – and by sheer chance our accommodation was pretty much right next to some of these super interesting geological formations.
We were staying at The Gull, right next to the PiliPili restaraunt and Afrovibe Adventure Lodge, but more importantly, right on main entrance to Myoli Beach – a popular wave riding beach and of course just one of Sedgefield’s five stunning beaches.
In other words, perfectly positioned to head out for a walk along the sand and get a better view of the famous petrified sand dunes.
(Interestingly enough though, given the time of year that we were visiting, the sand of Myoli beach was beyond frigid, meaning that without shoes an evening walk in the sand very quickly became quite a painful endeavour – so much so that all my girls, including Chantelle, basically flat out refused to join me on any of my walks!)
Bordered by a series of parallel fossil sand dunes that run between Kaaimans River in the west and Brenton on Sea in the east, Sedgefield is surrounded by the Indian Ocean and an extensive coastal lake system, meaning that there is plenty of water all around.
Over time, and we are talking millions of years here, the lower layers of a sand dune, thanks to the combined pressure from the layers above and the dissolved minerals like calcium carbonate present in the plentiful ground water, work together in cementing and compacting the sand into sandstone, with the layers often visible as ‘epoch bands’ within the resulting formations.
The result is stunning, ochre coloured, wind eroded, twisted rock formations, dramatically rising out of the sand around you.
We were unfortunately not in Sedgefield long enough to give me an opportunity to do the famous Gericke’s Point beach walk and get a better view of THOSE fantastic examples of fossilized dunes, but the nevertheless, the ones at Myoli Beach (and its sister, adjacent Cola Beach for that matter) certainly didn’t disappoint.
So perhaps well worth taking a look around at your surroundings the next time you find yourself playing in the surf on one of Sedgefield’s spectacular (but not necessarily safe for bathing) beaches.
Also, a handy embedded Google map, just in case you can’t quite place where Sedgefield is on the map.
Related Link: Sedgefield | #JuneHolidays2017