Grootvadersbosch and Boosmansbos
At Peter's suggestion, prior to his annual pilgrimage back to the Cape, we booked a couple of nights' camping in Grootvadersbosch with the idea of perhaps hiking to the Boosmansbos forest. We had undertaken the 2-day wilderness hike way back in 1999 in mist and rain....
Botmaskop
Botmaskop is a 910 m peak near my home and is the first mountain I see when I leave for work each morning. Its form is unique in the Jonkershoek ranges, resembling the prow of a dreadnought. The hike up takes about 2 hours, following a spur through municipal tree...
Western Panorama Trail
Up Swartboskloof and down Kurktrekker, Jonkershoek Nature Reserve The last time we ascended Swartboskloof I ended up under the knife to fix a ruptured disc. So this hike, once more with Santie - and Dorette - was something of a rite of passage, a reckoning with past...
Panorama Trail in spring
It was fantastic to get back into the mountains again on a serious hike for the first time since the back op in February. And the Boland served up the perfect day: warm, windless, impossibly blue, water coursing out of the rock and seeps everywhere, and the veld...
Coastal hikes in South Africa
Here is a guide to the South African coastal hikes I have had the privilege of experiencing. Hopefully it is useful to those who are planning to walk our beautiful and diverse coastline. The list starts at the north-eastern-most trail - the Pondo Trail from Mkambati...
Gentle adventures in the Canadian Rockies
This year the nature of our mid-winter break was more commensurate with our newly-minted status of grandparents. From the moment little Elena was born in Calgary, there was only going to be one destination. Fortunately Calgary is an hour's drive from the Rockies and...
Groot-Gouritz MTB Tour 2018
By popular demand we arranged another private MTB tour aimed at occasional cyclists, and not racers. The format was the same: reasonable daily distances, emphasis on touring and taking in the scenery, backup vehicles trailing us, plenty of stops and camping all the...
Skeletons, tables, castles and caves
As I lie here recovering from spinal surgery, I thought I would post about my last hike of any consequence before the double bout with operating theatres, one planned and the other not. Santie organised this classic route ascending Skeleton Gorge from Kirstenbosch...
Beyond Gordon’s Bay’s anchor
Gordon's Bay was our family's beach during the '50s and '60s. We spent many playful hours in its warm waters, holidaying at Thelma's Guesthouse - now long gone - and watching the fishing boats in the old harbour. The black and white photo below shows the bay and town...
Groothoekkloof descent
Traversing the Matroosberg from the Ceres side to the Hex River valley Paul Verhoeven proposed and led this 3-day kloofing trip as a more "sedate" version of the usual MCSA two-day dash down the kloof. Groothoekkloof descends rapidly from the ski slopes of the...
Cederberg the sedate way
December in the Cederberg is hot. So although Peter and I had all the best intentions of hiking into the wilderness from our camping bases at Sanddrif and Algeria, reality was decidedly less energy-intensive. We took a 9 km round-trip walk to the Maltese Cross and...
Leopard’s Gorge hike, cycle back
From Kogelberg to Harold Porter Botanical Garden and back I fail to understand why I hadn't thought of it before. The Leopard's Gorge hike is a perennial favourite: short and scenically spectacular, fynbos and forest. But the logistics of leaving transport at both...
Ordesa
Walks in Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park, Pyrenees After the Canal du Midi we rented a car at Carcassonne and drove through the Pyrenees to Torla in Spain, a mediaeval town high up in the mountains near the mouth of the Valle de Ordesa. Peter had argued for the...
Canal du Midi video clips
Here are five short, amateur video clips from our recent Canal du Midi boat tour. They are probably boring to watch, but they are a good record of our trip - and they may give you a sense of what to expect should you be planning a canal boating trip. For us, it was...
Postberg Trail take two
I was privileged to be invited by Sonja to make up the numbers on the Postberg Trail hike almost exactly a year after the previous time. It was a week earlier in the flower season, and although the flower display is not as intense as last time, the peninsula and...
Canal du Midi
Canal boating from Négra Lock to Argens-Minervois July saw the realisation of a lifelong fascination near the end of my sixtieth year celebrations: a canal boat trip on the canals of old Europe. I had seen a TV documentary about the Canal du Midi some years ago. Its...
Cederberg MTB Tour 2017
152 km in 3 days Our cycling tour, organised by Magriet, colleague and fellow, serial Baviaanskloofer, followed a very similar format to the previous cycling tour two years ago and was also timed for the same late-autumn weekend in May. There were four stark...
Kammanassie-Baviaanskloof MTB Tour 2017
The fourth edition of our private MTB tour which always features the Baviaanskloof, one of those places that can only be of Africa and of the eastern Cape of South Africa, has been refined over time to be a compact and leisurely cycling-camping tour along endless dirt...
Kammanassie through Baviaans
(All photos by Santie Gouws) There were 8 of us, 6 cyclists and 2 drivers of the support vehicles, Ralph’s old staatmaker Toyota Hilux and Magriet’s VW Tiguan. All of us, except Marion, Ralph’s wife, had done the trip before, so much was the anticipation of another...
Perdeberg Peak
Kogelberg Biosphere Reserve The hike to Perdeberg Peak (640 m ASL) from near the bridge across the Palmiet River is relatively easy, following a gradual gradient over some 11.8 km there and back. It rewards one with spectacular views: south-west over the Bot River...
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