A sad and sloshy day

It has been raining for ages and ages but we decided to go for a walk anyway. Just look at the water pouring down the car window. And look at Dougal cowering in the corner - he HATES the door slamming. He really is such a drip.
We set off for Silvermine, and joined up with Sue and Katta - both of whom were kitted out for very wet weather.
This is the path, not a river! But we didn't mind - we love this kind of weather.

Sadly, it was too wet for tea. Here are Katta, Sue and the Alpha Male in his dayglo raincoat on Crassula Edge looking over Noordhoek and back down to the reservoir.

Down there in the rain and mist you can just see the sweep of Long Beach where the day before a whole lot of False Killer Whales beached themselves and despite the efforts of hundreds of humans, they just kept coming back up to the beach. Eventually they had to be euthanased because they were suffering so badly. There were lots of photos on blogs and websites, which the Food Lady has added in below.

This photo was from a website called travelblog.portfoliocollection . You can see the mountains where we were walking on Sunday in the background. Lots of people are trying to get the whales back into the sea.

Another photo - this time from the News24 website - shows people trying to persuade this crazy whale to get back in the water. No-one seems to know why they do this.
Anyway, back to the walk.

It got rather wild on the top, so they decided to turn back. Dougal and I were very disappointed in these drippy humans! We were just beginning to have fun.

On a very bedraggled plant, the Food Lady spied some wax scale insects (Ceroplastes) that she photographed for someone who is interested in this sort of thing. Looks like something she would shout at me for smelling, let alone tasting!
When we got home they went off to see Madam Butterfly (a human not an insect this time) and they came home sniffling and bleary eyed because it was such a sad story.

Hoping next Sunday will be sunny and cheerful.