A couple of the easiest and most beautiful walks in Cape Town

Cape Town Walks

It's not always easy to find walks on which you can take a four year old. Actually, to be more frank, because his level of fit­ness eas­ily sur­passes mine, it isn't easy to find walks that a four year old will com­plete. If he chooses not to, and this is more often than not, then our backs or shoulders become his transport.

So the walk def­in­itely needs to accom­mod­ate our needs more than his — short, sweet and with incred­ible views, is prob­ably the sum total on my list. My husband's would prob­ably go some­thing like — flat, short, places to sit down and a lot of dis­trac­tion — sim­ilar enough for us to agree eas­ily on where and when we set forth ...

Kirstenbosch Walk

The walk that starts at the Constantia Nek park­ing lot and ends in Kirstenbosch Gardens fits the bill per­fectly, bar the fact that there need to be two cars involved (one for each end of the walk) or one of you gets to jog back to fetch it, and believe me, the walk from Constantia to Kirstenbosch might be flat and easy to do, but the way back leaves Kirstenbosch at quite a slope up the moun­tain side. And doing the walk the other way, from Kirstenbosch to Constantia Nek, involves an entrance fee (you get into Kirstenbosch for free if you come at it from Constantia Nek).

The walk is part of a con­tour path that runs all the way along from Devil's Peak to Constantia Nek. Really it serves as an access route through the numer­ous tree plant­a­tions and pock­ets of indi­gen­ous forest on Table Mountain's east­ern slopes.

Kirstenbosch Walk

The walk starts under a can­opy of trees, slightly uphill until you reach the con­tour path. Actually the entire walk is well shaded and almost always beneath trees. The park­ing lot is right on the circle oppos­ite Constantia Nek res­taur­ant. Once you're on the path it will fork after a bit. Almost every time we do this walk, one of us for­gets that we were con­fused on the pre­vi­ous walk and we for­get to the take the left fork, which heads up the hill. The uphill path is the bridle path and it offers some incred­ible views over False Bay.

There are no other spots on the walk where it isn't obvi­ous where one is trav­el­ling. If tak­ing the path over a week­end, you're also assured of enough fel­low trav­el­lers and their dogs to fol­low, that get­ting lost doesn't even enter into the equa­tion. It's a won­der­ful lazy stroll kind of walk that doesn't require your forever watch­ing your feet incase you land in a donga – per­fect if you're catch­ing up on the past week with your spouse because it's the only moment of res­pite from the verbal diarrhoea that is a young child at any other time.

Kirstenbosch Walks

There is one climb up steep log steps, but you're not far from Kirstenbosch by this stage. We usu­ally exit along the path that takes us past a dam (you can't miss it) and into the south­ern out­skirts of Kirstenbosch Gardens. Our car we usu­ally leave at the third park­ing area, out­side of Kirstenbosch close to the Rycroft Gate or top gate — it's just easier to get one's pic­nic out of the boot after your thighs have taken a bit of a ham­mer­ing on the down­hill into the gar­dens. Trekking across Kirstenbosch to one of the other park­ing areas before lunch could leave you worse for wear.

There is noth­ing nicer than spread­ing your blanket under a can­opy of trees in the upper reaches of the garden, the south­ern sub­urbs spread beneath you and whatever mouth­wa­ter­ing tempta­tions you packed into your bas­ket to devour. An after­noon snooze is not out of the ques­tion either, chil­dren depend­ent of course.

Easy Walks ...

The other really fun walk is at Newlands Forest and takes around an hour and a half. The great thing about this walk is that it's in the shade for most of the time, so per­fect for those hot sum­mer days. The idea is to walk towards the moun­tain from the forest sta­tion at Newlands. Take the right fork and head for the trees.

It's an easy walk, even the inclines are not par­tic­u­larly steep, and any climb­ing is per­fectly doable for little ones. Some people do this in the their lunch breaks in an attempt to invig­or­ate tir­ing brains, and I can under­stand why, as it's a par­tic­u­larly beau­ti­ful place to be and, when still enough, has an almost sur­real feel to it.

Newlands has also cre­ated what is known as the Littlewort Trail aimed at chil­dren, to intro­duce them to the eco­logy of an afromont­ane forest (such as the one at Newlands). If you're inter­ested, I think you can pick up a bro­chure about the trail from Table Mountain National Park in Westlake (021 701 8692). It's a form of self-guided tour and one gets to fol­low let­ters of the alpha­bet through the forest.

But even if you do not man­age to get your hands on a bro­chure, you can fol­low the Littlewort signs or just wander at will through the forest as there are some incred­ible things to see, like exposed roots of trees, little streams, all sorts of tree funghi (brack­ets) and even a few benches on which to rest weary legs.

Useful Links:
Cape Town Hiking Trails
Western Cape Hiking Trails
Things to Do in Cape Town
Newlands Accommodation
Constantia Accommodation