A march towards Red Hill

Today's walk started at Slangkop lighthouse with us in good spirits. Dougal had recovered from the trauma of being dragged out from under the land rover, put in the back and the door slamming by the time we got to Kommetjie. Thea, Paul and (SURPRISE!) Pauline were there, and then, Alice arrived. Joy and tail up! We zigzagged up to the ruins, and set off towards Cape Point through the scottie-height, rodent-rich fynbos. Here are Alice, Thea and Pauline ooohing and aaahing about silly plants when they could have been noticing skinks and mice (but no tortoises this time - still a bit chilly for them). You can almost see Cape Point along this lovely sandy track where we even met some dogs. (Including a Rottweiler that tried to eat us up but luckily its owner had it on a lead so it was saved from being savaged by us.)

After tea in the rocks we set off in the teeth of a strong, cold southeaster which just suits us Scots fine.

At Witsand road, inexplicably everyone turned round and went home except the Alpha Male and Food Lady. Maybe it was those spooky graves belonging to Sophia Bugdoll and some other strange names. The Alpha Male admired this smart old combi for a bit, then off we set at a smart Alpha Male pace over the road and along a new path.

On the march, the Food Lady just managed to sneak this photo of a butterfly on a Protea nitida flower. It is a Protea Scarlet (Capys alphaeus) that lays eggs on proteas, eats the protea and pupates in it too. The Protea nitida is growing on the brand new and very nice Hoerikwaggo Trail path from the reservoir near Witsand Rd to Red Hill. They are most unusual in being a multi-stemmed, dwarf from of the normally much larger wabooms. She also took a photo of this Blue Pipe - Gladiolus gracilis. We were pretty tired and hot (the nice cool wind had died down) when we got back to the Cobra Camp ruins where we had a drink and some dog biscuits. These old buildings are covered in rather boring graffiti. They need to take a look at Banksy's graffiti - some dude that Paul told us about who is famous for his graffiti in England. (We even found a dog blog that has something about him.)

We made it down to the land rover, and Dougal was actually relieved to be put in the back and hardly flinched when the door slammed. We were exhausted. (But that didn't stop us from barking at the ADT man when he came past on his bike and screaming at the Jack Russells going for a walk, and scaring the neighbours kid's on their bikes and ....)


On the subject of the graffiti artist, a final photo for the less intellectually refined of us...