Hiking Silvermine, Muizenberg and Kalk Bay 2

Looking south to Simonstown.

The Old Mule track.

St James, False Bay and the Hottentots' Holland Mountains in the distance


Nellie's Pool

Sunrise over Fish Hoek. Red sky in the morning ... shepherds' warning.

So our Hiking Group has a name. Well, a name agreed to by Sir Lawrence Olivier and myself, and who cares about the rest. We are the Tri-Glutei. We were making our way down Echo Valley, a week or two back, and Sir Lawrence was giving us a rendition of Monty Python's "The Man with Three Buttocks". Now just about anyone who grew up in the seventies can render some Python when pushed hard enough - most of us do it badly and incompletely, but the material is so brilliant that even badly rendered it can usually raise a snigger, although I confess that even my patience is worn exceedingly thin by another wannabee stand up comic regaling the company with "This parrot is dead". But Sir Lawrence has actually studied the stuff and of course can do all the accents. So he gave a rendition worthy of Cleese et al, in my opinion, and the opinions of the others, judging by the laughter. Later, when I suggested the matter of any self-respecting hiking group needing a name, we went through a few rather lame and inappropriate suggestions before hitting on the "Men with Three Buttocks", in Latin the Tri-Glutei (with apologies to the anatomists - I know that the gluteal muscles and the buttocks are not exactlythe same thing, but give us some latitude here, please). And that is what we have become.

Last week we had to miss our hike. It was a pumping south easter the night before and at 6 am on Saturday it was still blowing a gale. There was thick cloud on Kalk Bay Mountain and reportedly on Muizenberg Mountain as well, when I phoned through, so discretion proved the better part of valour and we took a rain check.

Today, on the other hand, was absolutely superb. When we put the dogs out at 4 am there was not a breath of wind. The eastern sky was pink and the cloud patterns exquisite. By six there was just a hint of a westerly. I packed the rucksack (getting good at it now - anorak, 2l of water or juice, sarmies, fruit, flower book, maps, wallet, cell phone, suntan lotion, shades, hat - forgot a torch again) and slipped out. Parked the car near the Dalesbrook Tidal Pool, at the car park across from Holy Trinity Church, Kalk Bay (where I knew we would be finishing our hike) and walked/jogged along Main Road to Muizenberg, turning up the hill opposite Railway House, before the police station. There is a short sharp staircase followed by a good path and one then finds oneself on Boyes Drive, just up from the entrance to Farmer Peck's Valley path, where I met the others.

Peter Slingsby's map, of which I am now the proud owner, has a note on the Peck's Valley ascent which states "endless stone steps". He isn't kidding. He has it marked as 1.7km / 1h15m from Boyes drive, and I think that was about right as well - we got to the military telecoms installation around 8 am. The views across the bay going up were stupendous, made more so by the fact that I was the fittest of the old farts and so could afford to stop every 20m or so and look at a flower, take a picture or simply scratch where it itched. Incredible how the views are never the same twice. Today there was a bit of light cloud on the high peaks and some mistiness across the bay, not much wind, which meant that the surface was almost smooth, shimmering, quite beautiful.

We turned south west and followed a good gravel road 1.5km down to Junction Pool, which was dry. We stopped and ate some sarmies and drank our juice, all the while enjoying live entertainment from Sir Lawrence's seemingly endless supply of jokes, before turning south east and following a concrete strip road 0.6km to Nellie's Pool. The pool itself is charming - not very large, probably not deep enough to swim in (we didn't try) but surrounded by watsonia's and some other wild flowers, some lovely gnarled old trees and with a great view. We went on a little further to the information hub at the top of Mimetes Valley, presumably named because the Tree Pagoda, Mimetes Fimbriifolius, of the Protea family (which has the rather intriguing Afrikaans name "maanhaarstompie" - wonder where that came from) occurs there, and then turned West and walked 300m back to the stone beacon. We then turned South and followed a path which was at times sandy, at times rocky, up Speciosa Valley, again presumably named that because the Brown-beard Sugarbush, Protea Speciosa (Afrikaans: "Baard Suikerbos") occurs there. The path climbs from 390m above sea level to a lower peak (507m) and then up to the main Kalk Bay Peak (516m). That's a climb of 130m in about 1.5km or a gradient of around 1 in 10, by my reckoning. En route one walks along the edge of the massive, overlooking St James and Kalk Bay and the views are again breath-taking. Between the two peaks, right on the path, there is the entrance to the Tartarus cave. One has to duck to get in, but it is roomy enough inside. Since we had only one small torch between 6 of us, we didn't get any further than the first "room", but it looked interesting and we may revisit it another time with better torches.

After we had admired the 360 degree panorama from the Kalk Bay Peak trig beacon, a short descent took us to the head of Echo Valley and we started to head east, down towards Kalk Bay. The path runs through a stunning piece of indigenous milkwood forest and someone, we assume the Parks Board, has been kind enough to build a boardwalk/stairway running most of the way. We heard some birds calling from the tree tops but they were secretive and we were unable to see or identify them.

After the forest the path descends another 100m or so (from around 350m to around 250m) to a point behind a low peak called Ou Kraal (217m). Here there is a T junction. In fact there is a "straight" option as well which takes one a short distance to the top of the Ou Kraal buttress, but the main options are left to St. James Ravine and Bailey's Kloof or right to Weary Willie's and Kalk Bay. The problem was that the 3 young bucks got there well before the 3 old farts, turned left and by the time we appeared they were halfway down the path, out of earshot. So we were more or less obliged to follow, although it was taking us further and further away from Kalk Bay where the cool tidal pool which awaited us and where my car was parked. The path is called "The Old Mule Path" but my map has a note that "It is highly unlikely that any mule ever walked along this 1950's inspection path". Not sure if the insinuation was "No mule would have been silly enough" or just that noone could remember ever having seen a mule there. Reminded me of the mules in the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Who knows? It is a beautiful traverse above St James and the gentle gradient was welcome on our increasingly sore knees.

Before long we were back on Boyes Drive. Two fire-engines came screaming past heading for Muizenberg, sirens blaring and lights flashing. We later saw the smoke drifting out over False Bay from the Steenberg area and presumed that that was where the blaze had been. Didn't hear anything on the news. It is that time of the year - very dry, very hot and very dangerous. We went back down Boyes for a few hundred metres and then turned left down the aptly named "Jacob's Ladder" staircase. The path descends between some of the most delightful cottages (interspersed with some fairly impressive mansions) in Cape Town, in my humble opinion, which affords the opportunity to discuss where one would like to live if one had the R 3 million, which one doesn't.

Then a short walk along Main Road to Dalebrook Tidal Pool. This week I had remembered to bring both my swimming shorts and a towel. I expected the water to be cold, which it probably was, compared to our pool, but after a 4 hour hike it was heavenly. On the seaward side of the pool the water is deep enough to get a good swim, even to dive into, although this is officially not allowed. The one thought that occurred to me as I swam back and forth and wallowed in the coolth was "How nice not to have to wear a swimming cap as is mandatory at the gym!"

The best was that by noon I was home and able to plan what to do with the rest of the day, unlike those who were just getting out of bed.