Yesterday, tired and emotional, I promised that I would upload photos from the weekend onto Flickr. Well, now I have. I’m nothing if not reliable.
As I explained earlier, the weather was nothing if not variable, with a gloriously sunny Saturday (above), followed by a moody and grey Sunday (below). I quite liked both.
My walk was just to explore a bit of coastline I hadn’t managed to get to before. Any beach walk with the kids typically has to end at or nearby the cottage at Piet se Punt, which is 2km from our place. Add the 2km back, the fact that it’s beach walking, and the detours to see rock pools, sand dunes and the like, and you’re going to run out of time, youthful energy, or both.
Thus, I chose to go alone when I set off to see a bit further around the corner (ironically the first bay you come to is Hoek se Baai). And when I got back, I had done 16km in 3 hours. I’d love to share tales of towering cliffs, rocky inlets, smugglers’ caves and possibly, aliens. But the truth is that this bit of coast is actually rather non-descript in geological (and extraterrestrial) terms. Dotted with seemingly abandoned buildings all the way to Die Walle (apparently, a really good fishing spot), I got almost as far west as the end of Brandfontein beach (you may remember that from here or here). And there, I found a handful of really modern lodges which looked like self catering places, and which I guess must be part of the Brian Mansergh Private Nature Reserve, but which I can’t find anywhere online, or on Google Earth. Recent build then, but poorly publicised too, and that’s a shame, because they look fantastic.
My aim was to get a photo of a Black Oystercatcher to enter into a competition from a local vineyard (bet you can’t guess which one), and I got several, including finding a chick in the weed on the beach. However, other pictures may also have been taken.
You can see these much promised and discussed images here.