A windy Wednesday walk

We were allowed on this Wednesday's walk above Chapman's Peak Drive! Happy happy day. You can just see me trying to keep up with Haj at the back there. It started off warm (we were glad we had had those hair cuts) and breezy but

it got more and more windy and on the way down to the car the Food Lady put me on a lead in case I got blown off the cliff. (So I cant be all that fat!)

Then Haj came back in the car with us! I love Haj but he doesn't really take much notice of me. Dougal was well behaved which is amazing. Perhaps he was tired.

Red Hill and Red Grasshoppers

Set out in the Land Rover with Lucy, Richard, Alice and the humans and parked high up on a Red Hill (except it wasn't really very red!) above Simon's Town. Simon is in Plett so again he passed up a good chance to come to his town. Looking back almost made us giddy.

Us waiting for them on the path to Grootkop (which is the smaller of the two Grootkops on Table Mountain. The other one is near Camps Bay).
Alice took this photo of Liparia parva which is only found on the Cape Peninsula and nowhere else. We were quite interested to hear that it is pollinated by rodents at night. Lucky for the flowers we couldn't find any rodents here even though we tried hard. They must have good hiding places.
Exploring caves, cracks and ledges of Grootkop.
Here is rock that looks like one of the cowsharks that Richard and Lucy were diving among the day before.

A red splash on Red Hill, another plant that only occurs on the Cape Peninsula, Gladiolus bonaspei.

Tea and rusks (and dried fruit for humans) at Kleinplaas Dam. What an exciting place! We both had a dip. After tea we set off round the dam where we met some other dogs...

... a malachite sunbird - a bird of the fynbos....

...and a red grasshopper on Red Hill.

The humans asked if we were interested in it but we declined because we could smell that it was BAD. And apparently it has caused deaths in dogs - probably Jack Russels who would be silly enough to eat a RED insect. They are "pyrgomorphid foaming grasshoppers" and they cant fly, and they store cardiac glycosides from the milkweeds on which they feed - an attempt to repel Jack Russels.

Alice was suffering a bit from a sore back, so we were quite glad when we reached the car again which was still in one piece under the Big Tree on Red Hill Drive.

Misery

Ambush! Bath and haircuts today with a lady called Sr Brigitte (082 704 7757) who came to the house and gave us lots of little treats while hair-cutting and bathing. I suppose it was better than the dog parlour!

Dougal's turn.

We will be nice and cool for the walk tomorrow now.

Harry comes to play

A puppy called Harry came to meet us today.
We had a good rough and tumble - and Dougal had a bit of a snarl but even he couldnt be cross with Harry for long - he is a such a cute little pup! Here he is taking cover with his human, Megan. My friend Harry 'n me.I think he got quite tired because he climbed up onto Adrian's lap and fell asleep even though there was delicious banana cake for tea.

Hey Harry, come down and play! Well, maybe another day....

Our English cousins

Marie-Anne and Jethro share secrets.

Wow - this is how they live in England. And we get a pile of smelly blankets on the kitchen floor if its raining (Dougal cant take a bit of wind and thunder!) otherwise our kennel is in the backyard. And just look at that BONE under the kennel.

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...

A misty Father's Day walk

The Food Lady told a fib and said that Sue was coming with visitors who liked to sleep late so we were starting our walk later. But Sue had no intention of coming and it was our long-legged human brothers that turned up! It was Father's Day and this was a special surprise for the Alpha Male. And he was surprised - he thought the house was on fire and the boys had come to call him! We set off in thick mist, but it started clearing a little so at least we had a bit of a view.
Destination: the elephants eye cave. Tea in the cave. There were lots of other dogs with their fathers and families too. Great fun! I tried to go off with a really interesting black dog and her family but the Food Lady came after me and hauled me back. But luckily there was a good picnic tea with rusks, poppy-seed cake (from the Meadowridge Common Cake Sale), cheese and Carr's Table Water biscuits, chocolate, dates and naartjies. A rather fluffy looking Dougal negotiating a stream on the way home.

Lots of pure white Common Sugarbush Protea repens all along the road for the Food Lady to photograph. (Protea repens was grown at Kew in 1774 and flowered around 1780, the first protea ever to flower in cultivation away from the Cape. It was also the first protea to have been grown outside in gardens in Australia, New Zealand and California from about 1890. It was the National Flower of South Africa up to 1976 and has inspired songs such as "Suikerbos ek wil jou he", which was composed on Lion's Head near Cape Town.) As we drove home through the sugarbushes, the mist closed in...