When I say tripping – I mean, I tripped! I came a cropper on the mountainside yesterday. On the way down to Ou Kraal, I slipped on rocks and tumbled forward and once I fell, I kept on going, until I arrived at my brother’s feet! Gratefully he was there to stop me. As I came to a halt, I stayed where I was for a few moments – am I okay? I felt pain, but not enough to be concerned that something was broken. Gratefully, I was wearing jeans, so they offered a good amount of protection! Gratefully, my cell phone was fine! So I got up and off we went again. It’s an amazing walk. We took off from Kalk Bay Main Road and went up the Ponder St. flight of steps…
Across the road is this walk starts…
The ascent is quite steep, although there are patches of gradual incline…
There’s lots of water about…
Look out for the rock art…it’s on one of the rocks we walked over…
Amazing hey!
What we decided to do was to head roughly parallel with Boyes Drive, walking towards Muizenberg. When we got to the sign post directing to Echo Valley, we turned right and headed up over the first ridge. We kept on going up and along, passing the turn off to Spes Bona. At that point, there is a path going right. That also goes down to Ou Kraal – it’s a shorter walk with some spectacular views. We continued straight along the contour path. It made the walk longer, but certainly the views were worth it.
When we arrived at this unmarked cairn, we turned right.
Looking back, we could see how far we had come…
It’s when we started coming down off this ridge that things began to get interesting… the path heads down to that valley ahead…
And it is very steep….
But the path doesn’t go straight down.It traverses around the mountain on the right and gives way to some of the most spectacular views I have ever seen…
This is looking up…
And this is looking down…
The path forks. We took the right path. The left would traverse back towards Muizenberg. The right path takes you along the mountain side towards the Ou Kraal path…it zig zags down the mountain, with some ups and downs…
Through lots of vegetation…
As we made progress, there was this picturesque view of St James to Simonstown…
We also passed this cave…
It was shortly after this that I took a tumble!
We continued along the easy descending path. Sadly there were unwelcome signs of life as people have pitched plastic homes close to the river and left trails of rubbish in their wake. Very soon we arrived at Boyes Drive…
From there it was a short walk back to the car which was in St. James. We headed down about 150 steps to get to the Main Road…
Apart from the bruising, it was a wonderful afternoon and one that I wouldn’t mind doing again – although next time with my hiking boots on!
Psalm 148:5
Let every created thing give praise to the Lord, for He issued His command, and they came into being.
And we get to enjoy His creation.
These are the days!
Keep the smile going.
God bless you!
In His Grip,
Helga xx 🙂