Hiking Silvermine again

Looking south down the peninsula chain from Noordhoek Peak

Promontories from left: Elsie's Peak, Simonstown Mountain.

Protea cynaroides, the King Protea, South Africa's national flower.

Looking across Hout Bay from Noordhoek Peak.

From left: Sentinel, Kapteinspiek, Karbonkelberg Peak, Suther Peak, Little Lion's Head

Silvermine Dam and the Amphitheatre. 

Note the crazy swimmers.

Protea

?? P. nitida / Wagon tree / Waboom

Protea

?? P repens / Common Sugar Bush / Suikerbos

Long Beach and Kommetjie, from Noordhoek Peak

The Triglutei had a fairly lengthy break. Or at least this member of the Triglutei did. I think the others tried to keep it going with one or two walks. The problem was that Gluteus number one, Sir Lawrence, got some work, and then got sick. So he was out of the running with flu and gypo and wat-ook-al for a while and only really got back on his feet this week. Gluteus number 2, My Learned Colleague, was available, as were a number of the riff-raff, but we just didn't get our act together.

Sir Lawrence asked me after Thursday's squash (which I won, for once), "So how about a hike on Saturday morning?" I must confess I did not jump at the opportunity. The winter has been drawing in, we have replaced the summer bedcovers with the big thick weighty down duvet, the sun is only rising after 7 and the prospect of getting up at 5.30 on a Saturday did not exactly thrill me. "Where?" I asked. "Wherever," he said, "how about we try that circular route you talked about in Silvermine?" Well, that got me interested. I walked that path back in the late seveties or eighties when we first came to Cape Town, with my parents and I'm not sure whom else. I remembered the spectacular views over Hout Bay, Chapman's Peak and Noordhoek, and the serenity of the mountain dam in the middle of the amphitheatre. Yes, that would indeed be a good way to spend a Saturday morning, even if it meant getting up at 5.30 in the dark and stumbling over the Corgies.

Funny how six weeks changes everything. Last time I went I packed a swimming costume and towel and wore shorts and a T shirt. This time I wore a woolly cap (which has a flag and says "RSA" in big letters: appropriate, I thought, before the World Cup), a think fleecy tracksuit top, tracksuit pants and I took an anorak in the bag. I was later glad I had.

I picked the other three up in Muizenberg just after 6.30. It was still dark. We drove slowly around the mountain and up Ou Kaapse Weg, arriving at the closed and locked Reserve Gate around 6.50. The Eastern sky was ablaze and it was no hardship to wait the ten minutes until the Warden arrived and opened up. A group of runners had just made it to the top from the other side of Ou Kaapse, one of whom I recognized as a friend of mine who has run the Comrades Marathon many times. They offloaded some empty cold-drink cans into our boot and went their way - interesting gesture. I told my party that this fellow is one of the few people I know who will stop in the middle of a marathon for a smoke break. He says he likes the taste.

It cost the others R15 each to get in: I got in for free thanks to my Wild Card. The poor official was still a bit sleepy and informed me with some satisfaction that as from next week opening time will be 8 a.m. not 7 a.m. We drove up the tar road as far as the parking lot next to the dam and left the car there.

The circular road, which is also a track for mountain bikers, takes you  northwest, up the Silvermine valley, up some fairly hectic zigzags and over the lip of the amphitheatre. In places the road is steep enough to have warranted concrete strips; for most of the rest it is loose gravel. We passed the turnoff to Elephant's Eye Cave and decided against making the detour, which would have added an hour to the trip. A small flock of malachite sun-birds was flitting from one bush to another, their brilliant green plumage catching the morning light. Too small to photograph satisfactorily with my camera unfortunately. 

We walked on up the valley betwen Constantiaberg and Noordhoek Ridge, which is called Prinskasteel Valley, according to my map, climbing steadily and stopping every so often to turn around and admire the rising sun over False Bay and the Hottentots Holland Mountains in the distance. The valley was mostly in shade and there was a brisk breeze blowing in from the south east, so it was fairly chilly. The flowers were good - Erica's particularly and some really superb King Protea specimens. I think most had flowered a month or so ago and were starting to dry out, but there were one or two new ones.

Where the main track turned south west, we continued on the path to the lookout over Hout Bay and were pretty much blown away by the view, fortunately;y not by the wind. Quite stupendous. You look down on Hout Bay, the Sentinel/Hangberg (331m), Kapteinspiek (414m), Hout Bay Harbour and Hout Bay Heights, the rather bizarre "Lichtenstein Castle", Karbonkelberg Peak (653m) and Suther Peak (615m) which together make up the Karbonkelberg and over to the right Little Lion's Head (437m), which the map told me was formerly known as "Het Zuycker-Broodt", and Hout Bay Corner - the end of the Twelve Apostles. The Bay looked calm from 622m, but I expect it wasn't so calm down at surface level. There were very few cars on Chapman's Peak Drive.

We tried to find a path labeled "Skyline Panorama Path", but couldn't find the start, so went back to the main track and continued in an anticlockwise direction on the east side of Noordhoek Ridge, climbing all the time, until we reached another superb viewpoint and the start of a short path to the top of Noordhoek Peak (754m), with its pyramid cairn. The map warned "take care in high winds", and there certainly was a keen wind blowing, although not strong enough to blow us off. The problem was the sun and the wind seemed to be coming from the same direction, so it wasn't possible to get out of the wind without losing the sunshine. As a result we took our pictures, admired the view, but didn't stay long at the top.

The track then heads south east down Noordhoek Ridge, with good views over the southern peninsula, Long Beach, Noordhoek itself, Kommetjie, Ocean View and the rest of the Fish Hoek Valley and beyond. We passed a path to Chapman's Peak which looked worth investigating at some point. We saw a couple of raptors - one was a crow, the other was smaller with a barred tail - maybe a buzzard or something like that - raptors are not my forte. Then down some zig zags with occasional shouts of "Cyclists!" and the need to get out of the way or be ridden over, past what the map calls a "Large Kreupelhout", which looked to me more like a "Large Dead Kreupelhout" although it did have some signs of life in the upper braches - some rather beautiful yellow moss - past a old, rather dry dam, to the Noordhoek Viewpoint.We didn't climb the "koppie" for the full view - there was a pretty good one from the edge of the ridge. 

We then left the road and headed north east over the ridge into the amphitheater again. We saw a bird with a long tail sitting in the top of a protea bush which we concluded must be a Cape sugarbird. Then down to the Silvermine Dam, where we sat for a few moments to finish our juice and biscuits and watch some crazy people swimming, before heading down to Lakeside for coffee (for all) and a late breakfast (for some). General agreement that it had been a good walk and that the area deserved further exploration.