Tripping along the Pipe Track

One of the Food Lady's favourite words to us is "Pipe down!" so I was a bit apprehensive to hear we were going to the Pipe Track, because the word means I have to keep quiet and its difficult for Scotties to do that. On Sunday morning Alice (yippee and howwwlllll with joy) came to our house, and on the way to the Pipe Track we picked up Sue and Thea (without Boris). Pauline met us in the parking place and off we went. The large black pipe - sometimes two of them - followed us all the way. This is how Jack Russells try to Pipe down on the Pipe Track. I was itching to bark at him but Dougal ignored him so I thought it would be prudent to pipe down too.We walked along the path above Camps Bay, the humans admiring the view and the flowers, and the dogs smelling all sorts of trails and picking up some pee mail. It was quite windy and stormy, but luckily not wet and the Twelve Apostles were mostly in the clouds ... so they couldn't see Dougal taking a sly bite at a husky's back legs. Look at him contemplating the fetlock. Luckily the husky had such thick hair that he didn't seem to notice... and the humans were all preoccupied with the view and flowers and trees. This is Thea minus Boris. I was dismayed when they saw a plant called Cats Claws, (Hyobanche sanguinea), but luckily they weren't like our cat's claws at all and stayed firmly on the plant. (Our cat's reach with her claws is alarming, and I haven't been able to snap off her paw because she is so quick.) For the tea spot they chose a steep slope overlooking some alien invasive gums which the Food Lady kept going on about why SANParks doesn't leave the pines on the other side and concentrate on taking out these more sinister invasives. After tea I walked with the Alpha Male all the way up to Slangolie Ravine. It was good to have him back!
The Food Lady didn't want us to go too much further as the path gets rather steep.So we turned round and went back, although I did contemplate taking a different route away from the pipe. Dougal said it wasn't a good idea. Then a funny smell had the humans crouching in the fynbos sniffing away like us dogs - I must say I was a bit bemused at such behaviour from them ... but it was this plant, a Bastertrewwa (Corycium orobanchoides) that was smelling strange. Alice reassured me that all was well. But they found another smelly plant, a Spider Lily (Ferraria crispa). At least they didn't start rolling in it! With all the sniffing, Dougal and the Alpha got far ahead and sat down to wait. The Alpha is still partly in France, so he didn't mind. Then we were a bit bemused when Thea, Sue and Pauline said goodbye with lots of kisses, and started walking down the road and Alice and our humans didn't follow but instead, took the higher path and carried on alone. Then we remembered that Sue had her car parked at Theresa Ave because she needed a quick getaway. In this photo of me and the Alpha M, you can just see the tip of Lions Head where the AM's hand is. Then we were back where we started from, and for a moment we thought we were catching a bus... but we got back into the car and went home. This is the view over Cape Town from the car park.