June 17, 2020
Present: Leora, Bruria, Cheftzi, Netanel
Length: 8:6 km
Trip 17: Ga'ash Beach to Poleg Beach
Beautiful lookout point along the trail. We are way above the shore line.
View from the bridge
We saw people getting ready to take off in a hang glider
This trip was hard! Most of this section was spent walking on small sand dunes on a cliff above the beach below. It is beautiful to walk alongside these cliffs. It was afternoon and the sun was setting and the breeze off the water was delicious and refreshing. But walking on sand takes a lot longer and wears you down!
I've seen people walk "the shvil" in sandals, and in this case I can understand it. Walking in sport shoes and socks in any depth of dry sand, one cannot avoid filling one's shoes and socks with sand. We stopped occasionally to pour out the sand, because you eventually feel as though there is no longer any room in your shoe for your foot !
At one point you stray from the dunes and cross the highway over a bridge. It's always startling to realize how close you are to civilization at all times.
This point is at the Yakum Junction. At the foot of the bridge there is a bus stop. This is a good place for someone to meet you halfway, if they wish to join you by bus, or leave you.
When you cross the bridge there is a gas station and several restaurants. It's a great place for refilling water and even stopping for a meal if you have the time. We made a short stop just to pour sand out of our shoes, buy a cold bottle of water and use the washrooms.
Shortly after this stop, you travel into a lovely nature reserve called: Udim Reserve. The sights here are distinctly different. It is less urban and more wild. Here, you walk on a trail. It is sometimes rocky and only a bit of the way at the beginning is paved. This is a lot easier. There is also some shade from higher trees in this area. Eventually you cross back towards Poleg beach, but this time, you cross under the highway in an underpass through a ravine.
We had planned to start at around 4 pm, which would have given us an hour to swim at the beach before sunset. However unexpected traffic, as well as the slower pace we managed while walking on the sand brought us to the end just 15 minutes before nightfall. That didn't stop Netanel from swimming!
We were under a bit of pressure to get to the end by that time, because once you cross the highway and leave the shops of Yakum, there are no more opportunities to meet a taxi or end the trail early. You need to either keep going or turn around. The Udim Reserve is not lit up and it would have been hard to navigate in the dark.
In fact, we had wanted to start this section, 2 km South, at Shfayim Beach. But when we saw that traffic was getting in our way, we realized that we had better cut the trip short - and it's a good thing we did! Had we not done this, we would have had to end at Yakum.
So at some time in the future we'll go to Ga'ash beach and while we're there, we will walk the 2 km South in order to complete the continuous shoreline section.
I had not expected to see so many flowers. By this time of the year, the winter wild flowers have died and things are mostly beige-brown in our area of the country. However on this trip there was a lot of green and there were the unexpected colors of summer wild flowers. These tend to be succulents or non-leafy flowers. But the colors pop in the dry landscape. I took pictures of the flora.
