Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Eye on Life

Broad interest online magazine

Trails

There and back

This crazy Cape Town weather leaves us in a tizz over what to wear on our hikes – raincoat with light summer blouse underneath or windcheater in the backpack in case the wind comes up? Rain at home doesn’t mean rain at our destination and vice versa. Such a quandary. Fortunately car boots have plenty of space for multiple outfits, not to mention a selection of boots and walking shoes to cope with the terrain. With help from the weatherman at yr.no, I am usually confident of conditions, but today he said fog for Sea Point and was completely wrong!

Our walk along the promenade from Three Anchor Bay to Bantry Bay and back involved no effort at all except to enjoy the view of ships in the roadstead, paragliders launching themselves and their tandem passengers in thrill-seeking adventure from the slopes of Signal Hill and glimpses between luxury apartment blocks lining the beachfront of the cableway on Table Mountain, Lion’s Head and some spectacularly puffy thunderclouds as a backdrop. The sun shone brightly, possibly the best weather we have ever done this walk in when I look back over previous pictorial records, but also one of the least crowded, with few fellow walkers relatively speaking. Despite it being the end of November, summer seems far away and the sparkling clean pools at the pavilion had only the hardiest swimmers, most likely in training for an aquatic sport. We watched them without envy.

My favourite part of this quite lengthy walk (6.5km) is the geological phenomenon that was of such interest to Darwin, and one can only imagine the tremendous forces at play to meld these rocks together. Vandals will not leave the information plaques intact, despite numerous attempts to make them less attractive to these scourges, and Google is probably the best place to find more adequate information on this most interesting place.

Coffee time in the shelter of the rocks where the swells battered and sprayed close by soon became too hot and we climbed back up to the promenade to try and catch a snatch of breeze coming in from the west. A leisurely stroll back to the cars, which seemed impossibly far away and beyond our imagination to have walked so far away from, ended in a pleasant lunch on the balcony of a local eatery. A wonderful way to spend a morning.

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