Walking above Simon's Town

If you've ever wanted to exper­i­ence the land of the hob­bits first-hand then head off to Red Hill reserve and the Kleinplaas Dam, just above Simon's Town.

First of all, it's not inund­ated with people and their dogs (although dogs are most wel­come; this is purely a fig­ure of speech), and secondly it is an enchanted coun­tryside that trans­ports you into a vir­tual oth­er­worldly zone, although few will tell you this (we have to have some secrets in Cape Town), and it does depend largely on the time of year that you head up to Kleinplaas Dam (the enchanted aspect does tend to dis­ap­pear below the water line after a fair amount of rain) ...

Getting there is gen­er­ally unex­cit­ing, and gives no hint of the scenery to fol­low. You head up the hill, off the main road between Glencairn and Simon's Town and just before you reach Simon's Town, past the Scratch Patch, until you join up with another road and on past Just Nuisance's grave that finally winds its way up to the top of the hill above Simon's Town. Quite close to a num­ber of remains of what were once houses (and the site of a land claim, I believe), is a park­ing area, where one can leave one's car. Head off in the gen­eral dir­ec­tion of the path, and you're on the way up to Kleinplaas Dam.

For those pre­fer­ring an actual hike, there is a clearly marked trail from Redhill Road, but we took a short­cut as we were walk­ing with little 'uns, so didn't do the offi­cial walk that one can fin­ish, I believe, in just over 2 hours (when you have little people with you, walk­ing to the corner cafe takes just over 2 hours!).

One of the Hoerikwaggo trails takes people from Red Hill to Cape town across four days, and begins along the paths past the Kleinplaas Dam. The first day of this par­tic­u­lar walk winds over the other side down along the top of Ocean View, to Kommetjie's Slangkop light­house, which might be a great walk for those more inclined towards a day hike.

On the day we headed up here, rain looked not only immin­ent, but it had begun to fall in that 'it's going to rain for ever' way that Cape Town some­times gets. But we could see a patch of blue on the hori­zon in the dir­ec­tion of the oppos­ite coast. Head up here at the right time of year, and you're in for a pleas­ant array of pelar­goni­ums, wat­so­nias, Cape snow and but­ter­fly lil­lies, and, of course, the dam and its gor­geous rock form­a­tions (have a look at onredhill's pho­to­stream on flickr and you'll see what I mean — http://www.flickr.com/photos/onredhill/ ).

Because that is why one heads up here. The dam sits at the top of the hill, built in 1964 on the east­ern por­tion of a farm that was known as Klein Plaats. Suddenly, one is upon the dam and one feels dis­tinctly as if one has entered another world, or, at the very least, the film set for Lord of the Rings. The dam is gor­geous (by this time, the sun had come out for a while and the place was lit up with an almost sur­real light) and sur­round­ing it are rocks that have been beaten into incred­ibly unusual shapes by both wind and water.

The banks of the dam are sim­ilar to those of a beach - sandy, white and invit­ing - and it wasn't long before back­packs were thrown down in wild aban­don and chil­dren were rolling up pants and  pulling off socks and shoes to paddle, des­pite the cold. After a snack some of us headed off to ven­ture fur­ther into hob­bit land, but we had not far to go before there was more fun to be had on the banks of a little stream, run­ning with golden water, its banks thick with an unusual clay that provided hours of happy fun.

You don't need much besides shorts, shoes and pos­sibly a pullover, to have fun in Cape Town!

Useful Links:
Western Cape Nature & Game reserves
Western Cape Attractions
Western Cape Accommodation

Photo Credts:
Kleinplaas Walk pho­to­graphs by ifi­jay on Flickr.com